Wigan Athletic F.C. 1-0 WBA

live text replay




the horrible reality of life in the PREMIER LEAGUE has finally returned to visit itself upon the baggies. west bromwich albion not only played poor, tentative football, but also lost a match they probably should have won anyway.

in truth, this was a pretty terrible game all around. i watched the better part of three other PREMIER LEAGUE fixtures besides this one and two CHAMPIONSHIP matches on the day. on every level the games from the second-tier were better entertainment and very often better football than their top-flight counterparts. the pressures of the PREMIER LEAGUE and its claustrophobic atmosphere where a draw is always two points dropped rather than a single-point won sometimes makes for some of the stiffest and most anemic football played on the planet.

so it was today with the baggies. after their mid-week draw with west ham, and feeling the pressure of having lost the two games previous to that, they produced a performance so flat that it was nothing short of pathetic. watching the now infamous michael oliver make a complete mess of the reading/norwich fixture in the CHAMPIONSHIP was quite brilliant entertainment and much better football by comparison. although, i'm not so sure what i would have thought if i was a canaries supporter.



and i do put it down to just that: the pressures of the PREMIER LEAGUE. jerome thomas, chris brunt and james morrison, both collectively and individually, all had their worst game of the year - and by a long way. peter odemwingie was isolated and not getting enough of the ball. graham dorrans has not found any form this year and is a shadow of the player who absolutely terrorized the CHAMPIONSHIP last season.

to be fair, the back-line played a pretty decent game, and it was no surprise that the latics had to rely on the counter-attack to score. but there was nothing going forward and even the attack minded substitutions of giles barnes, marc-antoine fortune and simon cox could create nothing.

this was every reason i hate the premiership. this is where the adventure ends and success is measured up in multi-million pound mediocrity. even long-term survival in the PREMIER LEAGUE offers nowhere to go for a club like west brom. the FA CUP isn't what it used to be and there's very little else to hope for except perhaps one day qualifying for a secondary european competition - much like what fulham has achieved in the last few years.

on the other hand, i was reminded today of a 1-0 loss at home to crystal palace last year that accompanied a similar number of matches without a win. of course, that ended with a 5-0 thrashing of watford at the hawthorns and the baggies resumed the business of securing automatic promotion. let's only hope that this is nothing more than a similarly short loss of form and we keep up a relative standard and a consistent midtable standing.