Swansea are just two points above the bottom three, having lost four straight league games and won only two of their past 13 in the second tier.
Matos, who was appointed as successor to Alan Sheehan this earlier this week, has urged his players to put their recent struggles to one side when they go to the West Midlands tomorrow afternoon.
Albion, five points and two places above the Swans in the Championship table will equally be keen to get the better of their Welsh rivals having slumped to 17th with just one win in their last seven outings.
Despite their poor form, the Baggies, however, have only lost once this season on their home turf.
“I think I joined the club in a moment that probably is not the easiest moment to join,” said Matos in his pre-match conference.
“But at the same time, I really believe that we can turn the moment around and it’s also not as bad as it seems.
“I think we have a squad of players that really is trying to get out of the moment.
“It’s quite clear that we need hunger and they need desire and that’s the starting point for the players as well.
“Of course, we need to take care of the freshness of the squad, but everyone needs to know that the one with hunger will play and the one who is willing to put in 100% effort will play.”
Matos says his side has a clean bill of health ahead of the fixture and says he will pick a side with a balance to play with a counter pressing mentality.
“The one with hunger will play and the one with 100% effort,” continued Matos.
“It will be different to Derby. They play 4-2-3-1 and are a good team with good technical players, especially up front.
“I think it’s a team that is competitive, a team that can have good moments and spells with the ball, they try to press, so it will be a really good game.
“But we need to focus on ourselves at the moment to create the game we want. We have to improve how we use the possession we have and translate that into opportunities.
“It’s clear that we need to have much more variety in the final third, in how we arrive there and we need to be much stronger on counter-pressing, so that’s the things we focus on.
“I said to the boys counter press is one of the tickets to the team. They need to have this inside of them and we start building.
“We had a really good training session, we analysed the Derby game, and I like the mentality and the effort the players put into the session.
“I think that’s important now we know how hard it is to go there and we need to compete; that’s the most important thing.
“We need to take out all the negative things that happened before, and after taking that out of us we can start getting performances. That’s what we need.
“We are 10 points behind the play-offs, so it’s so close, so close, everything.
“I think it will be around February that the table will look much more how it could end, let’s say it like that.
“So now is still a lot of games to come, a lot of points to fight for. I think maybe in 10-15 games it will be much clearer where are all the teams in the situation now.”
[Lead image: Swansea City FC]
