Two Scrappy Little Wins

Plymouth Argyle 0-1 WBA

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with the baggies coming out of their trip to blackpool rather like the walking wounded, the gaffer gave simon cox his first start in over a month. i like simon cox and hope that he sees cultivation of his talents and potentials; and along with it creates a long and successful career at the hawthorns.

to vindicate my belief in the young striker, his form held up from where he had left off by scoring the winner in this one on the 66th minute. while he's still many seasons from developing the relative class of skill, there are shades of kevin phillips both in form and function about young cox.

this was a starting line-up that i have wanted to see, and the combination of bednar and cox in a forward pairing had yet to really be used by di matteo. the significant result of this being that the baggies now find themselves with two strikers who are in form, and are fulfilling the requirements of the current roles within the gaffer's tactical planning and line-up selection. that is, the big starting striker scoring consistently and prolifically and the utility striker supplying goals when desperately needed.



while this wasn't a particularly good match, it was a rare clean-sheet and an unusual single goal game for the baggies. true to form, it felt like a draw for most of the match. even after the goal, the albion's proclivity for not protecting single-goal leads well gave this one its only real tension, and the team have to be commended for just grinding it out and winning another match in less than attractive fashion.

the one controversial moment that has added to roberto di matteo's present managerial challenges was the dismissal of jerome thomas on his second straight red-card of the season which will see the winger gone for a full four matches.

as with their performance against blackpool this was not beautiful football and was another example of how good teams win even when playing poorly. as routine as these wins might seem when considering things in context to the season's fixtures list, neither came easily; and with the temporary loss of thomas, miller and marek cech, it's lucky that the gaffer has had the foresight to start making the loan deals to see through what is a truly critical time with both a promotion push and FA cup competition still to contend with. the albion are now once again poised to challenge for first-place in the league and have created the very real possibility of a title battle with newcastle.

in spite of everything else the cost of these two scrappy little wins has probably been worth it.

Blackpool F.C. 2-3 WBA

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while the albion took advantage of nottingham forest's first defeat in months to leapfrog back into second place - and are now in the driver's seat as far the automatic promotion places go - they did so in questionable style and only by virtue of the good fortune that winning teams make for themselves which will see through a poor performance to gain a full 3-points. this is what is known in some schools as "winning ugly".

to be fair - and despite the recent addition of gabriel tamas playing in the first team - roberto di matteo had literally worn out his back line by starting the same 11 over a very congested period of fixtures which included five league games and an FA cup draw. in fact, both jonas olsson and marek cech seemed so bruised and beaten for the last 25 minutes of the match and it sounded as if the big swedish defender was lead-footed, lethargic and unable to get to the ball; while a spontaneous hamstring pull eventually pushed left-back cech forward into a hobbled front line alongside ishmael miller, who himself had sustained an ankle injury in winning the game saving penalty converted by graham dorrans. this whole unfortunate situation was ultimately forced due to roberto dimatteo's early - and ultimately unlucky - tactical substitutions and it seemed like half the team finished the match hobbled, exhausted and within no more than 30 seconds short of a blackpool equalizer.

while it was not reported as controversial in the mainstream press, the points of view as to whether the tackle on miller that led to the winning penalty were debated hotly and reported very differently by the media representatives of both clubs. if you were listening to the blackpool transmission it was reported that the penalty decision was unfair. the albion commentary declared it a stonewall penalty. in fact, ian holloway - one of my favourite talkers on the subject of football, by the way - refused to speak to the albion commentary staff after the match having asked them if they really thought it was a penalty or not and receiving an affirmative response did something like call them a couple of rude names, make a disparaging remark about honesty and partisan journalism and slammed a dressing room door on them.

having watched the replay myself, i have to come down on the side where my biases lay: it was indeed a penalty! while the blackpool defender may have got the ball on the initial slide to make the tackle (and i'm not even sure about that) there is no question that as ishmael miller continued his run in on goal, he was tripped by the full-back's outstretched leg. it was a penalty and should have been a red card - and probably would have been had the defender not made the initial tackle successfully.

while di matteo's substitutions seemed like a good idea at the time, beginning with the baggies' latest acquisition, andy slory coming on for an obviously fatigued jerome thomas. this didn't seem a a bad move at all given the recent schedule and no change to the line-up in six matches. slory actually saw a good effort saved by the blackpool keeper on his first real touch of the ball.



this was followed by the early introduction of ishmael miller. usually the big striker has been coming on for the last 20-15 minutes of the match in a measured regimen designed to ease him back into 90 minutes of football after a lay-off through injury which lasted over a year. he replaced bednar with about 25 minutes of regular time left, and then a similar like-for like swap had simon cox on for robert koren. both of these substitutions were nothing but tactical and meant to save his strikers and wingers from exhaustion and the subsequent danger of injury.

at the point of substitution, none of the west brom midfield were able to track back and give cover to their corresponding player in the back-line. while dorrans and koren were more unclear about whose role it was to get back and help mulumbu tidy-up; chris brunt and jerome thomas were equally unable to work back and give their corresponding full-backs cover after a loss of possession.

it was a real case of blessing or curse? as things started to unravel after the penalty decision. while it was significant in that it produced the winning goal, ishmael miller suffered a knock on the angle that left him unable to run and he had to limp out the rest of the match with di matteo having made his last substitution in bringing cox on for koren. moments later, marek cech collapsed both spontaneously and well away from the play with what was later revealed to be a pulled hamstring. he pushed forward into the strikers positions - obviously to minimize on the potential harm that a hobbled full-back might cause.

while dorrans converted the penalty that saw the baggies to victory, any injury to miller at this point is a move backward and we can all be thankful it was unrelated and isolated from his larger injury. it was evident from his inability to shake it off and run towards the end of the match that he'll probably be nursing a nasty bruise for the next couple of weeks and will have to continue with plans of rehabilitation through late substitutions after that.

it's evident that - and will be interesting to see - di matteo will have to make a bunch of changes for the away match to plymouth on saturday.