West Ham United 0-0 WBA
it was the hammers' lowest turnout for any league match of the year, so far, and the famously intimidating upton park seemed no more than a sulky little environment with no real atmosphere generated by the crowd. therefore - and coupled with the horribly jaded attitudes becoming evermore present in the english football community every day - it was easy to miss that the baggies provided the only real entertainment on the evening, were the better of the 2 teams, should have won 1 or 2-0; and would have done so but for superior goalkeeping on the part of west ham's robert green, and an unlucky header by first time premier league starter, shelton martis, coming back off the cross-bar with no one in position to knock it in the otherwise open goal. so, and in the end, despite being entertaining going forward, displaying impressive midfield skills, both in attack and at winning defensive balls with good, clever footballing, and high quality passing; as well as a surprisingly beefed up and tidy defensive performance - the baggies were otherwise mired in a game against a depleted and somewhat deflated looking west ham side that dragged down the quality of play to the point of the match being deemed "mediocre" by the BBC.
but then really, it's all a case of perspective. i guess if you are the team that looks most likely to get relegated ( as the baggies do at the moment, having become competitively a few points genuinely detached from the rest of the pack at the bottom) you're not much of a draw, and regarded as being of little consequence. in short, you're not going to get a particularly balanced critique of last week's performance in the mainstream press.
while it's more than likely going to become a case of "too little too late", but the baggies have every reason to feel positive about last monday's performance; and mowbray may have found a team that would - under better circumstances - have a decent chance of staying up. but with just 9 league games left there is just not enough time for this particular set of individuals to develop... well, anything! the only thing in which i can take heart, is that there are still a lot of "firsts" to be achieved and precedents to be set in the premier league; and while the FA Cup and the european places all look set to end in upholding the status quo - i can't remember a year like this at the bottom of the table.
i've been saying all year, that there are no bad teams in the premiership this year. period. you can point to the baggies' difficulty in scoring goals, for example; but you can't say they've played bad football. even borja-valero, who has been a player of little impact or consequence this year - is a tidy, talented midfielder with above average skills on the ball; and not short on footballing creativity. he - like much of the team - have been ineffective in producing final product.
how the season got away
there are two defining moments to the albion's season this year: even though i have called him a "pirate", and it became evident early on that the baggies needed him much more than the blues did - letting kevin phillips go was the biggest (and i believe the only really serious) mistake on the part of the management. i know there was the issue of the 2 years guaranteed - but i think in this case both parties should have just found the middle ground or some reasonable compromise, since i think he would have had more impact over a longer period of time with the baggies; as well as seen more actual playing time - as i think the baggies would have found just as much use for him as a starter, as well as, substitute; and he'd have been good for at least a dozen goals at this point - and his presence alone, in terms of confidence... perhaps as much as another fifteen from bednar, koren, greening, morrison and miller/moore/simpson. that's 24-plus potentially very important goals. anyway, that's how i imagine it would have been and i think he could have seen that through and gotten the second year that he wanted, as easily as albion could've just given him the 2 years straight off the bat. i figure both sides were wrong-headed in this one, and either side accepting the other's terms would have been preferable to the eventualities - or so it would seem. phillips would have been a more important presence at west brom than at city - and he would have been a central figure, even in the capacity as mentor amd inspiration to the younger players who were coming in this year. beyond that, an eventual coaching position with the club... maybe?
but that all happened and was part of the machinations before the season started, and we weren't quite sure where we were going to be. the first couple of months went ok. the albion spent the best part of august, september and october hovering around the middle-top half of the table - their best premier league start ever. even though it was clear by that point that no great burst of goals was welling up to take the premier league by storm, the baggies played well, and showed that they could scrap out tight victories (WBA 1-0 Fulham) with some unfamiliar tactical formations. for example, they were very clearly working on a system that was not at all in the model of the 4-4-2 and 4-3-3 formations of last year and of years before. these were formations dedicated to the idea of the single striker as the primary target man and a basic 4-5-1 formation flexing into a 4-3-3 on attack, with brunt and morrison playing wide like old fashioned left and right-wingers respectively. part of this experiment was to bring greening higher up in the attack formation playing directly behind the single striker - who, at the time was ishmael miller. as the baggies went into november and started their slide to the bottom of the table, this tactic began to come under a lot of criticism from the supporters, as pro-mowbray supporters stuck behind the gaffer and his detractors started calling for him to resign or get the sack - citing the poor performance of the single striker formation and poor quality in the selection (and availability) of central defenders; and the 4-5-1 formation was baffling everyone.
i, myself, was not at all convinced of the tactic. i thought, surely two strikers and an attacking central midfielder is the proper style for "west bromwich albion" football. i thought that mowbray was distracted, perhaps with the defensive difficulties that were beginning to show, and that that was his motivation in sticking with the five midfielders? i just didn't know. that is - up until the match when pompey came to the hawthorns - then did i understand.
jonathan greening scored to put the baggies ahead. this was a direct result of having him attack and penetrate the box behind single striker, ishmael miller. the baggies played a good game... the usual tidy passing and retention of possession; and as this made the game fairly open in the midfield, the portsmouth fullbacks were starting to get caught out by miller's pace on the break. i could see what the gaffer had been working on all along: the traditional albion passing game with a central midfielder playing high in attack, and a first-rate counter attack. as the second-half wore on - and with the albion 1-0 up - miller kept finding himself free to attack goal, and on several occasions - including the incident that took him out for the rest of the year - when he looked like a goal was well on and would only be a matter of minutes before he scored. in fact, as i said at the time, i thought he hurt himself because he could feel that he was on a goal - and that with the thrust of what he and the team had been working on starting to gel - he went all too enthusiastically after a ball that was never his.
when miller came off - and it looked serious from the outset - you could see how that at the very moment that the team had coalesced, everything was about to come together and the baggies were going to set the tone for how they would play out the rest of the season and remain competitive in the bottom half of the table, it all unraveled. without a player with miller's pace the 4-5-1 formation that the gaffer puzzled us with all season, and was suddenly making itself evident and its merits plain, went out the window - and within a few minutes peter crouch had equalized and the 2-0 home win that looked apparent ended in a 1-1 draw and half the season's work and planning gone - out the window! the albion - and with olsson out injured for a number of weeks - were left to scramble for someone who could score and a massive hole was now left in their back line. despite 2 or 3 good results that eventually followed (manchester city and tottenham) the albion have struggled with all their secondary plans, despite bringing in a couple of potentially talented young strikers and returning to a more conventional 4-4-2 formation. barring any late season heroics and a five game winning streak that rescues them from relegation, i will always see the miller injury as the turning point of this season.
WBA 1-1 Bolton Wanderers
this was, i believe, the same team that started against west ham with exception of dorrans, who came on as a sub. it was the usual sort of thing we've come to expect this season. with the added presence of shelton martis - and graham dorrans looking a clever little footballer - the team is highly improved, and this is probably the basic line-up that will see out the season. all i can suggest from this one - and as robert koren showed us - is that the baggies should be working to create opportunities for a few more 12-15 yard shooting chances and have a crack at the bloody goal instead of trying to walk it in on every possesion!
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