Les Reed and his bodyguard watch on and wait....
A trip to the Hawthorns to face the Baggies in our Monday
Night Football debut. It’s been a source
of comfort so far this season that we have either remained outside the
relegation zone or a point or so adrift but now there is a 5 point gap
following wins for Villa and Norwich
over the weekend so we need to get moving and fast. West Brom is not an ideal place to come with
this is mind as they’ve made a good start and aside from losing to Man City
Surely we will today see a more pragmatic approach from us
as trying to win 5-4 really isn’t working but then again, any fringe players
who were hoping to get in, did their chances no good at all in the debacle at Leeds in the COC.
As it is, The Great Gaston is fit again and is named on the right wing
in a very attacking looking 4-4-2 with Lallana on the left and J-Rod and Sir
Rickie up front. Is it odd that I see a
line-up fill of attacking intent and attack minded players and think “we’re
going to get stuffed” because that’s how I feel? It is undoubtedly, too open and whilst we
will cause the Baggies problems when we have the ball, when we haven’t got it,
it will be open season, especially as they have a reputation as a fast
counter-attacking side.. Artur Boruc
has been replaced by Gazza due to the pathetic fans who gave him a load of
stick on his home debut and then whinged like babies when he gave some
back. I am not impressed that he has
been dropped because of this and I hope you Chapel End morons who were involved
in all this, feel proud of yourselves.
How long does an internal investigation take for fucks sake. It’s been 8 days since the Spurs game.
We make an encouraging start by reaching the 5th
minute and still being at 0-0, Gaston has got himself on the ball from his
right wing berth and looked decent and the team looks fairly solid until
Yoshida slips when given a simple pass and West Brom are away. The ball is
slipped to Shane Long on the left who cuts in and thankfully pulls it back
behind everyone and we get away with it.
The next few minutes teach you that West Brom are going to kill us if we
give the ball away cheaply with their pace out wide and that Mulumbu in the
centre of midfield is an absolute beast (in a good way) as he repeatedly picks
up the ball and drives forward with neither Morgan or Davis getting anywhere
near him.
On the quarter hour we have our first shot in anger as
Gaston tries to trick his way into the box and the ball breaks to Sir Rickie on
the right and he hammers in a decent low shot (the kind that Kelvin Davis would
really struggle with) but Foster is rock solid.
West Brom go straight up the other end and Odemwingie and Jones find
themselves with the ball on our right wing with Foxy and Lallana about thirty
yards away. Odemwingie simply cuts in
and smashes in a shot which Gera prods over the bar from right in front of
Gazza. It seems the problem of actually
getting close, putting pressure on and getting tackles in before the opposition
shoot has not been addressed as yet... fabulous, I bet this is going to end
well.
We’re not too far behind in terms of creating chances and we
are having most of the possession but West Brom just look much more dangerous
than we do. Sir Rickie can't get enough
on a header from a Gaston cross and it just plops into Fosters’ midriff... ten
seconds later and Odemwingie has smashed a shot inches wide following a throw
out and one pass while we do the 'red training cone' thing in defence.
On the half hour West Brom take the lead through and
unsurprising source. It’s slightly
controversial as there’s a clear hand ball at the start of the move by the
eventual scorer but we have more than enough time to regroup and defend but we just don't. Lallana gets completely
the wrong side when he comes into tackle Odemwingie and the ball gets played
out to the right where Jones as usual, has half the pitch to himself. He simply passes it back to Odemwingie when
who is 25 yards out with no one closing him down. He has time to advance 5 yards before hitting
it, a flick off of Maya and it flies past Gazza for another pathetically easy
goal conceded.
We have a good go at conceding our usual two in two minutes
but somehow survive til half time with Gazza making a decent block from Long
and then Morgan blocking the shot from the rebound with his arm. The Baggies knock it back to their keeper who
booms it 70 yards straight to Dorrans on the left with no one in our team
getting anywhere near to getting a head on it depite it being in the air for
ages. More Keystone Cops defending later
and luckily, Odemwingie hoofs it over the bar.
We start the second half pretty well and with J-Rod actually
getting on the ball and crossing into the mixer where Olsson heads it against
Gaston’s head and it rebounds to Sir Rickie who chests it down superbly and
half volleys against the bar with Foster nowhere. Usually a near miss will pump a team up but
it seems to deflate us and the match goes through a period of West Brom being
totally comfortable and us being very uninspired and lethargic and seemingly
accepting the inevitable.
This duly arrives on the hour mark as Davis tries to put
Clyne away and West Brom intercept. The
ball goes to Ridgewell who I will never accept as a Premiership footballer and
he booms it down the line to long who has Fonte for company, almost. Easy as you like, Long turns onto his right
foot and with Jose getting nowhere near him, booms over a ‘come and get me’ cross onto
the head of Odemwingie who can’t miss and doesn’t to make it 2-0. We’ll go home now then shall we.
Gaston is looking tired as expected and J-Rod has had a
pretty poor game and they’re replaced with Mayuka and fans favourite Guly do
Prado whose first attacking involvement is to connect with a decent Foxy cross
only to pull out the best 50p head effort seen since the wistful League 1 days
of Neal Trotman. An interesting substitution
is made with Fox being replaced with Luke Shaw who is making his Premier League
debut. One for the future, the very near
future I expect.
We should cough up a 3rd goal after some woefully
weak defending by Jose allows Lukaku in but his cross to the back stick is
volleyed wide by Chris Brunt when he really had to score. We have a penalty shout with 10 to go when
Adam Lallana was taken out by Olsson and I can't find a single reason why this
wasn’t given but it wasn’t and so our chances of a consolation goal and just
maybe, an interesting last 10 minutes were gone.
There are 87 minutes gone and we have in the main been
woeful and easily beaten but the fans give
it a large ‘One Nigel Adkins’ to the obvious appreciation of the man
himself. It’s heart warming stuff and
shows that whilst it’s rare for life in football to be ‘fair’, the fans of this
club in the main, want to see Nigel Adkins stay as a reward for what he’s
achieved, even if (I guess) it involves us going down. On the pitch, Lallana plays a 1-2 and pokes
an effort which Foster smothers well.
And so a predictable, numbing performance comes to an end
and the inevitable away defeat is confirmed.
Unless something changes, we are not going to get a single point in away
games all season. West Brom were set up
in exactly the way you should be set up in this league if you’re not one of the
top 6 clubs - with a back 4 including full backs who gets forward, two
defensive midfielders who help out the centre backs, three attacking
midfielders with pace and invention and a lone front man who works the width of
the penalty area. Whether we play 4-4-2
or 4-3-3 then we have the same problems in every match which in my opinion,
come down to us having no defensive midfield and defenders who aren’t good
enough. Even if Morgan Schneiderlin was
Patrick Vieira and a complete natural in that position (which he clearly
isn’t), then he couldn’t do it on his own.
We had two out and out strikers on the pitch yesterday as well as two No
10’s in Ramirez and Lallana and a midfielder in Davis who is much happier going
forward than defending. It’s too open
and we will get stuffed every time we play this way, especially away from
home. I know that Odemwingie got the
goals but the most important players for West Brom
were Mulumbu and Yacob who sat in the middle of the park, screened the centre
backs, broke up our play and then either drove forward or passed it to the
creative players.
Even allowing for the lack of screen in front of them, our
defending is comedic. We allow players
to just walk up the wing, have a bath, have a fag and still have enough time to
cross the ball unhindered or even better, enough time to pass it across the top
of the box to a player who then has a free shot while totally free of any
challenge. We rarely pick up players and
on the rare occasions that we do, we don’t tackle them. Are we trying to get into Europe on the fair
play ticket by not getting any bookings or something? It ridiculous, I know it’s a cliché but
sometimes you really have to just get stuck into ‘em. We’re so easy to create chances against and
it’s garbage and we keep on doing it and it will get Nigel Adkins the sack,
sooner or later and we will of course, get relegated.
There is a desperate hope that we can sort it out in January
by signing some more players but who‘s to say we won’t make a complete balls of
the transfer window like we did in the summer.
I know there are Reed and Cortese shaped conspiracy theories as to who
is to blame for this but we undoubtedly signed players in the wrong positions
in the summer. Steven Davis is a better
footballer than Dean Hammond but I’d rather have the latter because he’s a
better defensive midfielder. We needed
to sign one of J-Rod and Mayuka but didn’t really need both, we needed to sign
a left back and we didn’t, we needed to sign two decent centre backs, we didn’t
get either, we needed pace on the wings, we didn’t get any. Also, from last year, two of our stronger
characters in Dean Hammond and Billy Sharp are no longer there.
We are where we are though with the players we’ve got and so
how do we sort it out? Calum Chambers
plays in midfield and at centre back so could he do a job in a holding
role? Is Jack Cork nearly fit yet? If not, could Yoshida play in midfield? - I
know it’s out of position but desperate times call for desperate measures,
should we try Hooiveld and Yoshida as the centre back pairing as it hasn’t been
tried yet, should Desperate Dan Seaborne be in the team and should we re-sign
Paul Wotton as a free agent?
Next up is Swansea at home –
a failure to win that and the vultures really will be circling.
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