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.
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