WBA v Nottingham Forest (retro)

WBA v Nottingham Forest

Fulham 2-0 WBA

well... i don't know what to say. you can have whatever opinion you like - and difficult as this season has been - i have a feeling if we are ultimately relegated, we'll look back on this year and realize that the point where we really lost hold of a place in the premiership, was when jonathan greening got injured. i didn't see the loss to newcastle - until well after the fact, and already knew the outcome - but after seeing today's loss to fulham, it was pretty obvious that it is the presence of greening that brings a stability and control to the midfield and serves as a basis for their more successful moments going forward. without him, the forwards get trapped too far back to effectively get into the box; and his ability to win and control the ball in mid-field relieves the need for backtracking and extra work for the defenders. so, on top of any of their deficiencies in regards to scoring goals (which seems to be the consistent problem, this year) they have no real direction, and the confidence which they have surprisingly been able to sustain despite what must feel a truly miserable season, has finally begun to erode. i think this was most sharply reflected in bednar missing the late penalty. he second-guessed what would have normally been routine for him, as he is an excellent penalty taker. not even tony mowbray, the maestro himself, can keep spirits up without greening in the line-up. i hope his detractors have taken note and realized what all his oft-criticized little short backward and sideways passes are all about: retaining possession of the ball! it's the most crucial element in the playing style that the albion have committed to. without him, everyone else has to do a lot more work: the forwards and midfield have to work at winning the ball instead of getting forward, and not enough ball is won in the midfield, causing the defenders to have to constantly backtrack, with no opportunity of getting the ball forward.

i mean, we can't even look back to november, when we had really sputtered badly after a good start to the season - and have the same faith that eventually, the albion's high-level of basic football (running, passing, possession etc.) would ultimately begin to produce results - even if it took until the last 10 games. this might not be as true anymore as it once was. the albion were working very hard at building an offensive system based on the pace of ishmael miller, and the mid-field attacking skills of greening, morrison, brunt and koren. miller's out hurt for the rest of the year, morrison and koren have only been sporadically effective, and brunt doesn't always start. although greening is often reluctant to push forward and prefers to work the build-up rather than produce final outcome - he is an effective scorer with either foot, when he gets in position; and truthfully, week in week out, i've thought him all season to be the only true consistent premiership player in the side; and, at the moment, i can't see us finding that little three game win-streak that we need to pull us up out of relegation without him. the other deciding factor, it would seem, is how good a game can they get out of morrison and/or brunt? it seems that when either of these two have a good game, it produces positive results. morrison didn't play well today, and brunt should have started.

having followed the fortunes of fulham last year; who found themselves in a similar position as that of the baggies this year - i've had faith in the premise that eventually the wins will start to come. my first real doubts crept in after the home loss to newcastle, and were reinforced by the loss at fulham today. with the victories over spurs and middlesborough (nobody expected a result from visiting old trafford) coupled with a draw at hull (and despite what i considered a poor showing in the FA cup) i did think we were finally on our way. greening's injury - and with olsson out for an extended period now - their is no leadership that extends throughout the whole squad.

the other problem we face - that fulham were lucky with last year - is that the relegation battle is tight for all three drop spaces this year. last year, and with the likes of derby county, one team was so far behind that the relegation battle was effectively over just two spots. this year - and with the entire bottom half of the table having to compete against possible relegation, it's a much tougher go.

to be fair, the fullbacks are improving, expecially leon barnett - and that is one area where there is some sense of leadership, in the likes of meite; and no matter what you think of him, robinson lends a sense of character and physicality that (as long as he doesn't make a hash of a clearance or get turned the wrong way on tracking a run) is present nowhere else in the team. this is especially true with olsson out of the squad. as well - and i hope we can manage to keep him - zuiverloon is a potential star. his attacking play down the right wing will continue to improve as it has done all season. provided he stays in england he'll be one of the best players in the premiership one day... easy!

we came into this season with a reasonable and optimistic expectation of survival. the gaffer has been really good all year at keeping things in perspective and drawing attention to the positives rather than get flustered and miserable over the negatives. this is not only for the players', but he's been encouraging to the fans, as well, i think. as i've mentioned in my blog before: i always feel better after seing tony mowbray give us a post-match assessment after a particularly painful loss. while i have - since the newcastle game, become resigned to relegation (whereas before, i was anxious and hopeful and just waiting for the coalescence and breakthrough to happen) i've got no doubt that with "parachute payments" and the deft loan deals mowbray has made - one or two of which will hopefully pan out into full-time signings - the baggies will be back in the premiership within two years - and a better team than the one that started the opening day of the 2008-09 season.

for this reason, it's essential that the club stick with mowbray throughout the next few years, as this is really his team; as opposed to the remnants of the megson/robson baggies, enhanced by a couple of mercenary, journeymen veterans; and i think it's the only real road to long term success, given the baggies' style of management and budgeting.

Doing it the Hard Way

unusually, i'll start writing today's blog at half-time of today's match- which, by the live text commentary on BBC tells me - we are currently losing 1-3 at home to newcastle united, thanks to 3 goals (2 by united and 1 by the baggies) in the first 9 minutes. this is really disheartening and i've got nothing left to say... or at least, no more of the cliches about what a talented passing and control team we are in the midfield; or, what an attractive style of football we play... these are things we say to ourselves, to give some hope to what has been a largely miserable season, that will likely as not see us relegated back to the championship.

now... (well, fortune just pulled one back! c'mon you baggies!!!)


anyway, that just puts the score 2-3, but i'm still not going to bring up the BBC text window and keep watching and smacking the "refresh" key every 15 seconds... may be if they pull level, i'll pull myself away from my literary endeavors, but for the moment, i must keep writing.

the fact is, that with the sweeping changes that took place after last year's promotion and championship trophy win, went a west bromwich team that would have been capable of more competitive stuff in the premiership than the team at the moment; and as it is, mid-season injuries and all. the experience of players like zoltan gera and koumas - not to mention the immeasurable importance of kevin phillips, would have left the baggies in good stead to establish themselves almost immediately as a solid competitive premier league side. had they not lost the wembley play-off to derby county the year before, we would be right in there with the likes of wigan, fulham and west ham, right now - maybe dreaming of bigger things even. it was really that good a team - at least, offensively.

but the pressure is on. we have to win games to stay in the premiership - and i'm not just stating the obvious. keeping pace is not good enough; our defensive record is the worst in the league, so we would need to stay up on points... goal differences are not to our advantage.

instead, and after a good start to the season, i might add - we are looking to stay in the premiership the hard way. as we went into november, the baggies new system for the offense, using a single striker, had spluttered badly, and defensively we had become the worst team in the division. the conventional wisdom is that the albion were playing a style of football that, at this level, they are just not good enough to play. witness: last week's 0-5 drubbing at the hands of manchester united. you cannot play open, passing, attractive, expansive, attacking football against someone who does it that much better than you; and without a top-notch defense upon which to base this, in the premier league especially, it's going to be all the worse.

tony mowbray has had some really tough breaks this year, but he has to be admired for sticking to his guns; and the baggies management has to be doubly admired for (and against the current conventional wisdom) sticking with him, knowing that you won't ever develop anything without a long-term manager with enough time to actually build something. in that case, it's just a painful year and we're all gonna' have to look to other places for some excitement in the world of football this year. for example, i wouldn't mind seeing a good run in the FA cup by one of the championship teams like swansea or coventry. i mean, we sure could use a 2nd division club taking the final - we got a whole generation of kids now who've never even seen that happen... can you imagine?!?!

sunderland v leeds 1973

i love english football. since my first experience on a saturday morning in may 1971, when i heard the famous arsenal/liverpool cup final live on the radio; then saw the repeat on CBC TV the following week. i developed my first loyalties when, that same year, they started a new professional franchise here in toronto, and i realized that i was seeing players from a team called aston villa, with a manager who had played for a club called fulham; and a certain brian talbot played for us one year - and he turned up scoring in a famous cup semi-final 5 or 6 years later playing for ipswich against west brom; before, he himself, after that, became the last player/manager for west brom. i saw pele live with his club team santos. i saw the heart of midlothian, and the next year aberdeen when they came on promotional tours. i lived in england the year that southampton had their famous cup victory over manchester united - the same year that albion (managed by player johnny giles) won promotion to the first division and went on to become the legendary side of 1978-79... i hated man. united, leeds and derby, cheered for west brom, ipswich and nottingham forest. then in the 90s it was chris waddle and sheffield wedensday that captured my imagination...

wherever i've been and whatever i've done in this world, i have always come back to my passion for following football... and right now my passion is the baggies. i can't explain it, and it can't be any other way. maybe, i wish it were different, but... but... what can i do?

it's taken tony mowbray - what with the unfortunate ishmael miller situation - this long to put together a team that can score goals in the premiership. he realized that we would definitely not survive without scorers. his deft dealings with loans only during the transfer window seems to have helped in a big way in this department; as well as the mid-field getting involved in the attack and producing some goals. the trouble now is that the defense is inexperienced and prone to the regular defensive blunders that a good offensive team will pull you into. it's clear that aside from meite and olson, who've both been out hurt, the back-line is limited and inexperienced enough so as to be only of championship quality. we won't really get a fair chance to assess carson's goalkeeping as long as defenders keep hanging him out to dry. the one thing i pretty much guarantee about mowbray as a manager, is that any steps backwards he takes, he will take two forward. if the worst happens, and we do end up back in the championship, he will already know how - and will already be very close to having the team - to be able to win promotion and bring a better team up - and one he developed himself, on his own terms and in a fairly short space of time (1 or 2 years maybe) - than he was able to bring this time.

what i resent (and i think that resent is appropriate) is that in this world of digital information the rule is freedom and diversity. it's much much harder to control digital information than it is to distribute. as a rule - and at its most basic - digital information works best when it is unencumbered by extra "stuff". living in canada, for example, i can't hear the live local audio commentaries of the football matches as one can in the UK. the information itself does not act this way. if clicking on a link on the BBC website opens a stand-alone media player which plays me live streaming audio commentary of a teams' home games; then stopping that from happening outside the UK (as is the present situation) someone has had to configure something at a fairly high-level server and block the transmission outside the UK. that is: go out of their way to stop how the information would normally and naturally work.



last year was great fun. only trouble was i had to follow the whole thing pretty much on the BBC text commentaries. we don't get much non-premiership football on TV where i live. last year, i saw two baggies matches fairly late in the season; one against wolves, and another against watford (i think?!?!). then, of course, in the FA cup i saw the quarter-final win over bristol rovers, and then the semi-final against portsmouth. that was why i was so excited about this year, because i have sentanta sports and with two other weekly broadcasts i get, i have the opportunity to watch every premier-league game each week, if not live then in repeat sometime over the ensuing week. i haven't missed an albion league game all year.

so for no other reason than the premier league facilitates my being able to follow the baggies, i'll keep my faith that they can stay up to struggle another year and develop a team inside the hostile confines of the premier league. if i don't i'd be resigning to another year or two following the baggies on BBC text reports and cheering for fulham on TV...

so, in the meantime, maybe one of you UK baggies supporters'll get on

http://www.justin.tv

and stream the local BBC audio commentaries for us internationals who can't access it?

west brom went on to lose the match today 2-3...

Fighting for Top-Flight Mediocrity

WBA 0-5 Manchester United

of course, i saw this one live... the applicable cliche here is that the baggies deserve credit for showing up to play and "not just parking the bus". who cares?!? i've been watching live football every saturday and sunday morning, since the outset of the premier-league - and week old repeats of MOTD for the 10 years prior to that. having always borne little love for manchester united (a team supported by people who have a pathological need to celebrate victory, who live in fear of draws and losses, not winning the premiership and are nurtured in an atmosphere so as to be protected from such) this was just another colossal bore. i mean, we already know that man. u. is the deepest and most talented team in the world. in the old days, before the spirit of the FA Cup had departed from the large stadiums and magic was still possible in top-flight football, the score might have been the other way round.


WBA v Manchester United - 1976

unfortunately, we will never see this again. the spirit has gone forever.

Hull City 2-2 WBA

i saw this one at 2.00 in the morning while i was half asleep and already knew the result...

good scrappy little game against competitive opposition. we should have played a little better and we need more goals in games like this one if we are going to survive in the premiership. i believe that hull is going down, so this is another one that we should have won.

The FA Cup

well, i have to admit to a bitter disappointment at getting knocked out of the FA cup by burnley yesterday... i had been so hopeful; but, it was obvious - through the absence of 2 out of 3 of the team's most recent on-form scorers from the starting line-up - that mowbray was gonna' win this one on his own managerial terms or go out of the cup... no problem! no worries! i could understand where he was coming from, since we are at present one of the on-form clubs in the relegation battle, which reaches right up to 11th or 12th place in the table, at the moment. i guess TM figured he couldn't afford any more injuries (short term or otherwise), he could afford to rest some of the form players (koren and morrison, for example) and that was the way he was gonna' play it.

it was an all too familiar defensive mistake to allow burnley to force the replay against us at the hawthorns; but i think it was a worse philosophical mistake to not try and win the replay; but, of course, that has to do with my fundamental beliefs about the history and identity of west bromwich albion football club. i'd love to see a cup run, but you could tell from the starting line-up of the second match that, like anbody else nowadays, it wasn't going to happen at the expense of any premier league aspirations. so, since the baggies are not going to panic and fire their manager; nor are they going to spend any money on premier league players, nor, either, are they going to go broke from relegaton, so i guess they have to draw the line and tighten the reigns on their maverick, bizarre and iconoclast managerial practices somewhere.

i'm beginning to believe that both hull and portsmouth will go down before us - both teams are in complete free-fall as far as league play goes (although, hull have a potential FA cup run going); and i was completely wrong about west ham, who i thought were going to go into a similar free-fall, but seem to have picked themselves up out of it in the last month. as for the rest of the mob, i think the real battle will be between the albion, middlesborough, stoke and newcastle. blackburn seems to have found the form to keep them up and both sunderland and tottenham will probably be able to do enough to see to it that they are in the premiership next year.

mowbray has done some pretty fair wheeling and dealing with the loans in the last month - coupled with the fact that the midfield has started to fire up offensively - that we've just about got the scorers to do the job. with a little bit of luck at the back - where inexperience could possibly kill us - that would give scott carson the help he needs and deserves - we can survive.

even though it has been much of the same things said over and over again, i'm impressed by the face that mowbray has been able to put on this whole season; much of which must have been an absolute nightmare for him. i know his post game interviews this year have always been a little bit one-note, as he talks about how pleased he was with the general play but we "lacked the incisiveness" or "cutting-edge in the final third" or how he "thought they played well and dominated in the middle of the park but have to start getting more things right in the final third at both ends" and that they just "didn't take their chances when they came."

i dunno', but i always feel a little better after the gaffers post game assessment and i have to assume he has the same effect on the team and none of the players (with the possible exception of cech) seem to have gotten too down about the situation - at least, not outwardly - and that you can't help but feel at least a little unquestioning optimism is always present in the albion camp. this contrasts pretty highly with some of the other clubs where you can just tell everyone is miserable and desperate... like blackburn before they hired sam allardyce, or portsmouth after harry redknapp left.

so i won't lament the cup and look back at the teams of yesteryear and hope that anytime soon that the albion will be able to rise to heights seen by the great teams of the late 60s and 70s. in truth, the best we can hope for is to survive in the premiership somehow and go on to establish ourselves as a solid mid-table premiership team... and the funny thing is: if tony mowbray can do this on his own terms - that is, working within the parameters of values that, i think, are shared by the chairman and the organization in general - he will have proved himself some kind of truly exceptional football manager.