West Bromwich Albion 2-0 Ipswich Town: Baggies end Tractor Boys' long unbeaten run
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Darnell Furlong gymnastically heads in the opening goal for West Brom against Ipswich
West Brom moved back into the top six of the Championship with a win which brought Ipswich's 12-game unbeaten league run to an end.
Kieran McKenna's promotion hopefuls had not tasted defeat in the league since 26 August when they lost to Leeds, but excellent goals from Darnell Furlong and Grady Diangana underlined the Baggies' billing as the division's best home performers over the past year.
Victory also saw Carlos Corberan's team bounce straight back from their first defeat in five games, at Southampton before the international break, and reclaim a place in the play-off places.
Furlong's early balletic header set the ball rolling for the home side and a brilliant, sweeping counter-attack was neatly finished by Diangana soon after half-time to secure the points and inflict Ipswich's first league away defeat since January.
The game was a meeting of an irresistible home force against an immovable away object, with West Brom garnering more points at home - 50 in the past year under Corberan - than any other Championship team, and Ipswich last losing on their travels in the league at Oxford 10 months ago.
It was the Baggies who got off to a flying start as the impressive Jed Wallace's wicked cross was inches away from the head of the diving Brandon Thomas-Asante.
From the ensuing corner, Matt Phillips curved the ball to the near post and Furlong leapt to guide his header in off the far post.
The Baggies almost doubled their lead when Thomas-Asante had a shot beaten away by Ipswich keeper Vaclav Hladky, but the Tractor Boys fought their way back into the reckoning as Wes Burns fired a good chance over the bar following Conor Chaplin's flick.
Ipswich forced West Brom back at the start of the second half but were caught by a classic counter-punch.
Conor Townsend coolly played the ball out of defence for Wallace, who raced over halfway and slipped the ball to Thomas-Asante, peeling off on his outside. The striker in turn moved the ball on to Diangana and, with the visitors' defence scurrying back, he slid the ball home off the far post.
That killed the game as a contest and the scoreline would have been more emphatic but for an astonishing miss from Phillips.
Wallace was again the creator, hitting the byline and sliding his cross to the Scotland international a few yards out with the goal gaping in front of him. He tried to finish with the outside of his right foot and sent the ball back in the direction from which it had arrived, to keep Ipswich interested.
They could not make a dent as the Baggies moved towards their fourth win in five games and up to fifth place, although Tottenham loanee Dane Scarlett almost created a tense finish by firing a shot narrowly wide near the end of normal time.
West Brom manager Carlos Corberan told BBC Radio WM:
"It's necessary to perform at this level if you want to win, they are in the first position in the table because they do very good things and if you are not focussed in every single aspect that can have an impact on the result.
"For me today it has been a game of the team winning because I saw every single player performing very well during the game.
"We knew that today we needed to defend and to attack very well because when you play against a team that has scored more goals in the league so far you need to be very concentrated. Not only when you don't have the ball, in the moments when you have the ball to manage it well, to attack more and never lose the ball in a balanced situation."
Ipswich manager Kieran McKenna told BBC Radio Suffolk:
"I didn't think we gave ourselves a chance to build a performance.
"We concede with the first corner that we get against us and that makes the first half more comfortable for West Brom because they quite like to not have the ball at times and defend on shape and defend together.
"We were able to be stable in the game and have lots of possession but they're a really hard team to break down.
"We were ready to change some things at half time, came out strong in the second half and then they score from our corner and from there it's really difficult to come back against a team like this."