Valerian Ismael laments ref performance in West Brom's draw with Cardiff

On the day owner Guochuan Lai attended his first game for three years and new signing Daryl Dike was paraded in front of supporters, the Baggies were held to a 1-1 draw at The Hawthorns.

But an uneventful game descended into chaos when referee Bramall refused to give a penalty after Conor Townsend had been hauled to the floor by Marlon Pack with just seconds remaining.

It looked a clear spot-kick and led to Ismael charging onto the pitch to express his anger towards the official – with the boss being dragged away by skipper Jake Livermore.

All the players then became embroiled in a mass confrontation – which led to Albion's Sam Johnstone and Cardiff's Will Vaulks receiving red cards after the full-time whistle.

"It’s a clear penalty – I can’t say anything else," Ismael said. " At some point you need that bit of luck, that the will referee to do their job.

"I’ve seen the situation 10 times in my room and it is a penalty.

"But it wasn’t just the penalty decision, other decisions went against us.

"In my opinion it was a poor referring performance."

While Albion should have been awarded a penalty that – if scored – would have won them the game, Ismael wasn't happy with his team's overall performance over the 90 minutes.

"Sometimes you want to start quickly but if you want to see a good game you have to have two teams who want to play football and to win," the Frenchman continued.

"One team was here to waste time, to not play football and to create frustration.

"They scored with their first shot on target, from a set-piece, but you need to deal with that.

"I think in the second half we were better, in the first half we didn’t move the ball quickly enough.

"We needed a quick switch of play, for the ball to come over the centre back or to overload on one side. That is how we scored.

"The second half we have enough possibilities to score."

One positive for Albion was that Dike was paraded before supporters at half-time, 24 hours after joining on a four-and-a-half-year deal from Orland City.

The Express & Star understands the Baggies have paid in the region of £7million to land the 21-year-old.

Ismael also confirmed post-match that Semi Ajayi has been called up by Nigeria for the African Cup of Nations.

"He (Ajayi) will leave tomorrow (Monday) for the African Cup. He will miss a lot of games."