The Baggies have conceded the most goals in the Premier League so far, 51, and Hodgson was watching in the stands when they let a three-goal lead slip against West Ham last Saturday. The former Liverpool boss knows that giving teams a head start, or letting them back into the game as was the case last week, is not an option. He said: "The teams that are at the bottom and are fighting to stay in the league have all got to be aware that if we're going to leak or give away goals, or make it easy for the opposition to score, then we're making a fairly large rod for our back. "It's hard to score goals in this league against any team, and if you're giving yourself the handicap of a two or three goal deficit every game then you've got to have some wonderful players to be scoring the necessary goals to win you the matches." Hodgson takes charge of West Brom ahead of their most important game of the season so far, one which he feels overshadows his own arrival. "Yes, it is a massive game, but I don't know how it being my first game impacts particularly on it," he said. "It just means that a game that would have been fairly high profile anyway has maybe got a slightly higher profile." Hodgson is well known for his meticulous training drills and attention to detail, but having spent less than a week in charge, he doubts how much influence he has been able to have in terms of footballing style. "Three training sessions is not much, three or four days' work with a team is not much," he said. "That's always going to be the case whenever there's a managerial change in the middle of the season, the person who comes in won't have had much time to really stamp his ideas on the team and it takes time to do that. "If you're going to work and try and prepare a team and coach a team to play in a certain way, you're not going to do that after one week because that would be the territory of the magic wand."
