Tony Mowbray hailed in-form striker Roman Bednar after he fired Championship leaders West Brom to a 2-1 home victory over Burnley.On-loan Hearts marksman Bednar scored his 12th goal in 14 games in the 60th minute to strengthen Albion's position at the top of the table.

Albion made things hard for themselves by falling behind after just three minutes to a strike by their former midfielder James O'Connor, his first goal of the season.

But Bostjan Cesar's first goal for Albion since his arrival on loan from Marseille last summer in the 26th minute and Bednar's strike earned Mowbray's side their first league win in three games.

The margin of the victory should have been greater as Robert Koren missed a 68th-minute penalty, leaving Mowbray grateful to the intervention of Bednar.

Mowbray said: "Roman is a typical centre-forward. He is big, strong, fast and brave.

"He scores goals and he has a great humility about his personality. He has no edges to himself and he doesn't think he is better than he is, he just gets on with his game and that is a great quality for a player to have to not realise how good they are sometimes.

"We are delighted he is here and delighted that keep scoring goals for us.

"There is a deal in place to sign him at the end of the season. That will kick in and he will become our player after we pay Hearts some money."

As for his team's overall display, Mowbray added: "I think it was a well-deserved three points.

"But you have to give Burnley a lot of credit because they have a system that moves the ball around the pitch and they did give us problems.

"We gave them a goal start, as we seem to do most weeks, but fortunately we had enough to get the three points.

"We showed great determination to make sure we won the game and if we had scored the penalty the game would have been finished.

"Missing a penalty gives the opposition a lift but we saw out the game and there have been other days when we might not have seen it out."

Burnley manager Owen Coyle was disappointed that his side failed to build on the flying start they had been given by O'Connor.

Coyle said: "We made a terrific start and we tried to be positive against a fantastic side who are not top of the table by accident. I will be very surprised if they do not get one of the top two spots this season.

"At the end we have to be disappointed that we did not see it through after the start we made.

"I am not going to make too much of it, but for me there was a clear foul in the build-up to Albion's first goal.

"We were disappointed with the second goal we lost but there are still a lot of positives to take from the game.

"The effort and work ethic from my players was second to none.

"It was two teams playing positive football and I have said that that will be our outlook home or away. We will go to try and win games.

"We will lick our wounds and come back stronger for it. We can be a potent force."

Burnley caught Albion cold when Robbie Blake's free-kick was nodded down by Stanislav Varga and O'Connor stabbed the ball home from three yards.

James Morrison was inches away from drawing Albion level when his header hit the bar before Cesar finally made their pressure pay.

The Slovenian international was left unmarked when Jonathan Greening swept in a corner and Cesar had the simple task of scoring with a close-range volley.

Bednar then made his decisive contribution on the hour when he converted Paul Robinson's left-wing cross with a neat header.

Koren should have made the game safe from the spot when he was brought down by Jon Harley but his weak penalty was comfortably

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