The Dust Now Settled

i was hopping mad after the albion's opening day 6-0 demolition at the hands of league champions, chelsea. i was certainly never expecting a win, and my initial reaction to the outcome was hugely over the top. so i have had to step back, try and figure out what i actually felt and make a proper assessment.

what really had me going - and what might have seemed irrelevent to many, in light of the one-sided scoreline - was chris brunt being played in a newly created defensive midfield position alongside congolese veteran, youssouf mulumbu. at first, i was perplexed. brunt featured as both right and left winger last year, was the club's second-highest scorer, as well as being a motivating force and important influence when pushing the team into attack. while he has a great deal of technical skill, is something of a dead-ball specialist, as well as a first-rate passer also possessed of a great shot, he has never been noted as a particularly good defender.

indeed, while the first chelsea goal scored just on 6 minutes gone was the goalie's mistake, the second was caused by brunt's inability to hold his position in the wall allowing a didier drogba free-kick to sneak through the gap. part of my point here is this: if brunt had been on the right-wing (where he is usually played in partnership with left-winger, jerome thomas and central midfield maestro, graham dorrans) he would never had been in the defensive wall in the first place!!! so, where most of the criticisim i encountered was levelled against his inability to defend, i was much more critical of the choice to play him as a defender.



while this didn't seem as big an issue with other supporters, they were still confused and thought it a strange position for the northern ireland international to be playing in.

another negative aspect to brunt being in the middle of the park, is that his prescence - and knowing his ability to thread perfect balls into space for the forwards - had graham dorrans pushed too far upfield without the room he needs to direct and dictacte movement in the final-third. moving chris brunt from the wing was disruptive to the entire attack and negated the baggies' offensive thrust when the match itself and/or a more reasonable scoreline were still within reach.

as i realized later on, playing brunt out of position like this is proabably due to the fact that common footballing wisdom would dictate that at premier league level, brunt is not fast enough to play his accustomed wide positions; and that the gaffer's new defensive-look 4-5-1 setup is going to need to be able to break going forward with more pace than a player like chris brunt can produce. if this is indeed true, then i think it would be a slavish assumption that the gap in quality between the top-flight and league football is too big to overcome; and what you were doing to great success in the championship will never work at the higher level of premier league football! the only answer is to success in the top-flight, it seems, is to have a chairman who can be pressured to "spash the cash" on signings beyond their means.

sadly, what i think this situation ultimately means is that they either find a new role for chris brunt, or he may not have a place in di matteo's vision for west bromwich albion. if this is so, then i am just sad that a player i have always admired, found entertaining, enjoyed watching and cheering for is no longer of proper use to the club to which i have eternally pledged my support.



i have - until this point in time - always been a supporter and defender of di matteo's and have never had any essential reason to criticize his management of the club; either in the signings he's made, the players he's let go, his team selection or tactical planning. in fact, i thought he was brilliant at managing his resources and maximizing on the side as a whole. he re-invigorated the spirit of some of the players who were dissatisfied and under-used during the reign of tony mowbray. he even coaxed a few good performances and several goals out of luke moore during the front end of the season.

in chris brunt, you have a player who scored 8 goals in his last premiership campaign. it seems stupid to me - and in light of the fact that you are going to need goals to get results - that even if brunt is not in the gaffer's long-term plans, di matteo doesn't have a better or more enthusiastic natural winger in the side at the moment; and he should playing to the team's strengths, not initiating some abstract practice in damage control - especially before any damage has been done!

when the albion acquired gabriel tamas and steven reid at the end of last season, it was evident that the gaffer was looking to shore up the team's defence. with the further signing of spanish centre-half, pablo ibanez, from atletico madrid - and now nicky shorey from the villa - it was the first time in years that the albion have the makings of a solid back-four. i thought that they would move a player like steven reid into a defensive midfield pairing with youssouff mulumbu and concentrate on acquiring a first-rate striker. other than that, i couldn't really see much need to change things around. which, in fact, they really haven't all that much, but the changes made have been poor. for my money, chris brunt is much more important to the team than most supporters - and i suspect some of the management - seem able to imagine. i believe this positional move has caused severe problems in the basic structure of and throughout the entire west brom attack (jerome thomas excluded).

knowing that brunt will again be playing in the defensive midfield in the home match against sunderland at the hawthorns on saturday, i am disappointed. it should have been obvious to one and all that it is a bad idea. but then again, that may be why i'm not a football manager...

however, and as a supporter, i can only hope that they find something in it and get the 3 points from sunderland at home.