WBA 4-1 Bristol City

live text replay

this last week's home match against bristol city has seen simon cox pretty much nail down a starting spot in the team - for the next few weeks, anyway. he was the maker of an own goal on the part of the robins when his shot in the 46th minute came off city defender louis carey after beating goalkeeper dean gerken. this built on first-half goals by jerome thomas just on 3 minutes; and chris brunt's 5th of the season in the 12th minute, to then make the score 3-0. as if that wasn't good enough, the 22-year-old striker then scored in his own right a minute later to put the baggies 4-0 up and bring his own season total to 3 goals in 7 starts.

if this is how he plays at this level of football, and he can keep this kind of form consistently, then he is definitely a player the baggies have been looking for the better part of the last two years. i think we can all be hopeful that he has the potential to make a significant long-term contribution to the albion organization. i'm already thinking about next year and how he'll pair up with ishmael miller!



following saturday's victory, chris brunt stated that he felt that things had started to fall into place, and everyone at the club is tuned in. as we become distanced from the poor results of early october, they thankfully begin to appear as nothing more than a blip in what looks to be shaping up into an otherwise successful season, and confirming brunt's current assessment. perhaps the albion are coming closer to living up to the potential that the present team is capable of?

while luke moore has not found his form, bednar has been out both injured and ill and a couple of the senior international players are grumbling about transfers if they don't get regular starts in the first team, everything else seems to be running smoothly and starting to gel.

of course, the baggies are still awaiting the return of their three long-term injuries: ishmael miller, james morrison and neil clement; but even with miller having begun training again, it is unlikely that any of these players will have any impact on or see much playing time this season. so, barring any activity in the january transfer window, the current team is the one that will see out the season.

with that in mind, and striker simon cox looking to have secured a starters spot for the time being, i think it's time that the gaffer thought about giving young chris wood a start. while there is no argument that age and inexperience weigh heavily against the teenage new zealand international, i think he is probably a more suitable choice in regards to style of play than is luke moore in an attack pairing alongside simon cox. indeed, this is one of the few things that i've had to question in di matteo's tactics these last two or three weeks.

there is no doubt that roman bednar would be the first choice to start, but two weeks out to injury and then illness last week saw luke moore start again - and in the last two matches in which cox has also started. while i can imagine the tentative nature of starting both a 17 and 22-year-old in leading the line, moore looks like he needs a few weeks to take the pressure off, put in a few goals for the reserve side and the opportunity to get his head straight.



i was at the hawthorns for young wood's only goal of the season, and as a passage of football, i think was a good indicator (and never mind the goal itself - it was a cracker!) as to what his game is about. he's a big target and has a natural ability to hold the ball up, is good with his back to goal and turning on defenders using his size and speed to make space. as well, he has fairly good pace when running directly at a defender, and he's got a good long range shot. he has consistently been showing good form in the reserves, and considering the current situation with the strikers at the club, it couldn't hurt to start the two youngsters this week.

other than that, the albion just have to remember not to let up, and that this is the championship where anybody can beat anybody else on any given day. the baggies have played well against top-ten competition but have faltered the odd-time and had poor games against teams in the mid-to-bottom half of the table. with the match away to sheffield wednesday this weekend, there is good opportunity to keep things rolling and address this issue.

Leicester City 1-2 WBA

live text replay

i started writing this blog as a therapy for having become obsessed with the albion and as a way to deal with the misery of last season in the premier league. it was a terrible disappointment after the expectation that this team had created through their brilliant footballing performance in winning the championship and reaching the FA cup semi-final the year before.

ron atkinson even said earlier this year that he had thought that the baggies would go up and achieve what would become a long-term consolidation as a premier-league club. their utter failure to do so has had a special frustration from the point of view of the club's overseas supporters, among whom, i have the privilege to count myself.

you see, up until this year it was pointless and impossible for me to subscribe to the ALBION WORLD audio commentary service offered on the club's website. it wasn't so much a technical or regional problem that prevented me the ability to do so, but rather, an ethical consideration. the problem was that the service would only work for WINOWS operating systems. i do not use microsoft products; nor am i a MAC user. i use a regular PC, but several years ago (and after years of using "pirated" WINDOWS operating sytems) i started playing around with several FREE and OPEN-SOURCE operating systems, commonly known as LINUX.

it is possible - and a great many people do this for practical reasons - to have a PC run multiple operating systems. you can have multiple versions of WINDOWS and LINUX variants on a single machine; and for the first few months i ran both WINDOWS 2000 and SLACKWARE LINUX on the same PC. as soon as i had figured out how to do everything in the LINUX environment that i could in WINDOWS, i abandoned microsoft completely. i came to adopt this idea as a philosophical concept. there are many reasons other than the practical consideration of having a faster computer not to use WINDOWS, most of which are, in fact, ethical in nature. but i won't get in to that here and now...

while i am able to pay expensive cable television subscription fees and get a full complement of premier-league games, championship matches were few and far between. in 2007-08, i saw the baggies 4 times: 2 league matches, and the FA Cup quarter and semi-finals. the rest of the season was followed on the BBC live text commentaries. but with the baggies back in the premiership and on weekly TV, i had the greatest hopes for the next season.



after the home fixture with portsmouth last year, and ishmael miller was gone for the season, i knew the albion were in trouble so i started to blog. a great deal of my early blogging had to do with the fact that i was going to "lose" the baggies as they would be back in the championship and limited to 2 or 3 televised matches a year; and as a committed free software user i couldn't justify installing WINDOWS on my computer for any reason!

two things changed drastically this last year though. first, the service that most clubs in the premier and football leagues use for live audio commentary on the internet changed so that it was now compatible with MAC and LINUX operating systems. as well, the football league had made a deal to broadcast 60 championship and league 1 matches on TV this year, and they're all being carried on SETANTA SPORTS CANADA. this means that all west brom matches would now be available to me, either on TV or through the internet as live audio commentary. besides that, i was lucky enough to have been in england this last september and had the most fortunate opportunity to see the baggies play twice at home in the space of four days.

anyway, the point of this rumination is to wonder what i'm doing here anymore? does anybody read me? does it matter? is what i've got to say - besides expressing the woes of trying to follow a team like the albion from overseas - worth the time i put in? can one accurately assess a situation from thousands of miles away and with radio commentary as their main receiving medium?

actually, i'm surprised at how much i'm able to understand about what's going on with the club. i heard two points made by the commentary team on ALBION RADIO prior to the leicester city match that were almost verbatim observations as i had made them in my blog of the previous week reviewing the watford match. it seems that what had been obvious to me had also been obvious to the commentary staff - and worthy enough to mention on the broadcast.



of course, i'm not sure that it would be the same had i not been to the hawthorns in september, or seen the first few matches of the season on TV. there are details that can only be fully received through direct visual information. for example, when i saw the baggies play at the hawthorns it was pretty clear that the left-back, joe mattock, consistently came up very high in attack and was often in danger of being caught out of position. in fact, on the tuesday night match that i attended v doncaster rovers, the albion gave up an early goal precisely as a result of the young full-back's poor positional play. this was a weakness in the team that persisted, was consistent and definitely cost a couple of goals along the way. in the last few games, however, it seems like he's learned his lesson and is keeping his position much better. you need at least an initial visual experience to make a fully informed assessment of a simple situation such as this one.

while life is not perfect, in that i still don't believe in DRM, which is the various intrusive forms of controlling information online so that it can't be downloaded or copied - as is the case with all premier and football league video and audio content - the situation is at least now a reasonable compromise. i have a paid membership account - made through the albion website - which allows me to access any of the live audio streams of premier and football league clubs that have opted in to the PLAYER setup.

still, the question goes unanswered. should i be writing about football if i'm not saying anything different from any other football writers?

i'm not sure. but i will, at least, chronicle this season - and at the end, make an accompanying video as well - as it has become possible for me to keep up with and gather the information needed to do so; and ultimately, i guess, because i can't get the albion out of my head!

WBA 5-0 Watford F.C.

i was really worried about this one after seeing watford absolutely demolish sheffield wednesday by a score of 4-1 on TV last friday. it was really good football. but if you want to come to the hawthorns and try to play football at this level against the albion you're going to get beat 9 times out of 10.

live text replay

as crystal palace and - to a lesser extent - swansea city showed, the only way to really beat this baggies team in the championship is by employing the most negative tactics... 10 men behind the ball and a single striker looking for counter-attack opportunities. but playing football? you probably aren't going to win.

so it was as the baggies pasted watford 5-0 at the hawthorns last saturday.


i don't think too many albion fans would have much to criticize from this performance. it was another clean-sheet for scott carson, five goals all coming by different sources, and a victory achieved largely without chris brunt, who came on for only the last 25 minutes and was relatively inconsequential to the outcome of the match.




there were several factors about this match which will make it seem a like a crucial turning point in the season if the baggies do well in the next few games, and ultimately, gain promotion on the year. first off, this was a tight and well executed performance throughout. i had to listen to the match on the ALBION RADIO, and the infrequency with which the fullbacks were mentioned in the commentary is one indication of very solid work at the back. i only remember meite's name coming up twice in the whole broadcast, for example, and that's always a good sign for a defender.

while not improving his overall performance - and still looking kind of out of it - luke moore returned to doing a strikers' job, scoring in the 48th minute to end a drought for the team's forwards that has lasted since september 19th. gianni zuiverloon netted his first goal for the club, and simon cox scored perhaps the best of the goal of the game to open his league goals account for the albion and looks to have earned a place in the starting team.



i hope the baggies have learned their lessons over the first third of the season, as the upcoming away match at leicester city is possibly the toughest prospect that the club have had to face all season. i saw city play QPR on TV last week and on their day they are probably the most all-around solid side in the division. leicester are excellent at the back - having the second best defensive record in the league - and although they play with less possession than other teams might, they know how to take advantage of their opportunities when they come.

the last time that west brom had a big win, they followed up with a string of poor performances which started at home in a 0-1 loss to crystal palace. they can't afford another run of poor results at this point of the season. if the albion can continue with last week's form, then they can beat leicester city at home. it's as simple as that. but, this is a definite case where the defensive game is going to have to be solid, as i can't see this leicester side allowing the baggies' forwards as much space, time or opportunity as they had last saturday.