West Bromwich Albion boss Roy Hodgson was happy with their performance in defeat to Everton.

Hodgson felt his side would have done better had they taken a chance to equalise late in the first half when Paul Scharner drew a save out of Tim Howard and Chris Brunt fired the rebound wide off team-mate Shane Long.

"We missed a cutting edge. We went behind unfortunately with the deflected goal but were playing quite well up to half-time and could have had an equaliser," he said.

"It was going to be very important to keep that going in the second half but the second goal killed that off.

"It gave Everton the confidence they needed to keep the ball and punish us on the counter-attack.

"In the end we were thankful to some very good defending from Jonas Olsson and the goalkeeper (Ben Foster) to keep it to two."