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...
No comments:
Post a Comment