Leyton Orient F.C. 0-2 WBA

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i'm beginning to think that dave bowler, west brom's head publications editor and co-commentator on the ALBION RADIO match transmissions, is one of the great minds of midlands football. not just for the fact that i agree with him on most matters concerning football and the albion; or that he often gives voice to things i had already been thinking. but rather because he comes up with some truly great ideas.

with a poor crowd turnout of 2,349 at brisbane road for a second-round LEAGUE CUP draw, mr. bowler suggested that the FA start the tournament prior to the regular season. so, instead of a pre-season made up of meaningless friendlies or the occasional participation in a local or invitational tournament, you would then be able to get through the first few rounds of the LEAGUE CUP before the league had even started. this would possibly re-invigorate a competition that has never been particularly popular and seems to attract less and less interest with each passing year.

at the ridiculous ticket price of £22, one can see why - in an environment where the "season-ticket" culture is already dominant - a supporter would resent digging into his pocket for what is being passed off as a "glamour" fixture due to the participation of a top-flight team. meanwhile, the premier league side fields no less than 11 changes to the team that played competitively in the premiership the previous weekend. this would be much less of a charade if they implemented such a scheme, as mr. bowler suggests, as well as creating a greater interest in the tournament from the outset. it wouldn't be without its problems, but i think that it would be worth it to work them out.



with that said, the albion "reserves" did their job and youngster sam mantom was pivotal in his first-team debut. the teenage midfielder gave a solid performance throughout the 90 minutes, as well as delivering the final ball for pablo ibanez to head home on the first goal and having a hand in the making of the second.

new zealand international, chris wood, scored late on to put the match beyond the league 1 side, giving him the distinction of having now scored at least once in all three major domestic competitions in which he has played.

it is also worth noting that boaz myhill claimed a clean-sheet on his club debut, as well, showing that he is more than adeqaute as back-up for scott carson. the young welsh keeper had relatively little to challenge him in this fixture, but he performed his routine duties with a solid sense of professionalism, despite some trouble with his kicking game, making a few clearances that seemed uncharacteristically tentative.

other than a late injury to substitute marek cech, which has since revealed to be a fractured metatarsal that will put the slovakian international out for the next 6 weeks, the match was uneventful and the ALBION RADIO commentary team were left having to resort to babbling banter and reading text messages with huge gaps to fill due to lack of any real action.

cech, who has started off the season with two very solid performances, will be sorely missed when the baggies travel to anfield on sunday.

i hope that the bigwigs that run the FA get a chance to hear the voices of people like dave bowler from time to time. with ideas and opinions derived from a lifetime dedicated to observing football, he is always worth listening to.

Cardiff City 1-1 WBA

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well, this was a real hard day's night... and another draw for the baggies as they managed to further their unbeaten streak (9 games now) and (at least for the next 24 hours) are again tied with league-leaders newcastle on points, but find themselves in first place by virtue of superior goal difference. the toon have a game in hand and will be home to coventry tomorrow. perhaps the sky-blues and their improved form of late can give the baggies a small helping hand in their push for automatic promotion?

at the outset of the match it was revealed that roman bednar had a back injury and would be sitting this game out. injuries couldn't come much heavier after what the baggies have sustained this last two weeks. funnily enough though, bednar was named as an non-playing substitute, since di matteo now finds himself without enough healthy players to even field a full first team. bednar did no warm-ups, his presence entirely symbolic, and was there only to see that there were enough bums sat on the bench that it might make up a whole squad.



as expected, both new arrivals to the albion, andy slory and frank nouble, got starting spots on the wing and midfield respectively, with albion sticking to the 4-5-1 formation that has been so successful during the baggies' recent run of form. unfortunately, i can never understand why di matteo leaves luke moore as the lone striker, as it is a game most unsuited to the ex-villa striker's style and ability?!?!

back in the "hot media" environment of ALBION RADIO once again, there was a controversial and questionable penalty called on jonas olsson. although, i have a suspicion that any good cardiff-biased commentary would have reported a stonewall penalty rather than a questionable decision. however, i wasn't able to catch up with cardiff city transmission before they signed off as i usually would. peter whittingham promptly dispatched the spot-kick to make it 1-0 to bluebirds. the mainstream press reported no controversy as to the awarding of the penalty.



the baggies were probably the better side on the day and wouldn't have deserved to lose this one. luckily, gianni zuiverloon again provided the heroics by scoring in stoppage-time just before the end of the first half. graham dorrans made the final pass on a move that had started with a scott carson free kick and ended with the young dutch full-back burying the ball in the bottom left hand corner of the cardiff city goal.

i've been contending all year that i don't think we've seen this particular baggies team play up to their real potential - even with the big victories over middlesbrough, watford and sheffield wedneday - and now, i'm not sure that we're really going to get to see a team featuring the likes of roman bednar, ishmael miller, chris brunt, robert koren, simon cox or graham dorrans at their best until next year. although, there is still the possibility of something in the way of cup glory that might produce itself at some point, for the time being, the primary goal is to finish out this season (and all its competitions) on the same note that we started. this is the part of the season where management needs to be at its sharpest and deal with the job at its most desperate.



this was a good point won. cardiff are always a tough side at home and the albion's many draws with blue-birds over the years will attest to this.

in all likelihood - and once these next two or three matches are behind them - the albion will start to find things a little easier, and might even have a full team out by then.

it sounded as if the baggies should have won this one and were superior in all statistical areas. more importantly, the albion had three chances - the best falling for chris wood in the second-half - where they could (and probably should) have scored the winner.

Huddersfield Town 0-2 WBA

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this was perhaps the most unique media coverage of a football match i have ever seen or heard.

usually, the transmission of a match on ALBION RADIO through the PLAYER service on the club website begins about an hour before the match. there is some music played, sometimes it's just the sounds of the stadium PA system; i've even heard the crew doing their setup and mic checks before the game. but today there was nothing. i connected to the albion stream and it was dead. the embedded flashplayer was also indicating that the transmission was OFF-AIR. going back to the website homepage there was a news post about temporary difficulties with match commentary transmission at the galpharm stadium.

i switched to the huddersfield town stream - which transmits commentary from BBC Leeds - and that too cut out briefly at around the 15 minute mark. switching back to the albion stream i found that they had managed to get the transmission started, but were using a cell-phone passed back and forth between the two commentators to call the match on. as you can imagine, the sound was tinny and distorted and you could clearly hear them plugging in the recharger when needed during what was clearly a highly improvised effort. they obviously couldn't find a way to make their usual setup run and were forced to make use of a comically low-tech solution.



as for the match itself, the gaffer gave roman bednar a start with simon cox and put luke moore on the bench for this one. it was obvious, however, the present albion attacking formation with its deliberate lack of width, takes the big czech striker completely out of the game. he didn't really get much of the ball going forward and for the most part made little impact. roberto di matteo will have to put some thought into how he's going to use bednar for the rest of the season.

as usual, the baggies were slow out of the box and scott carson - back from a three game suspension - took command of his penalty area early on with the huddersfield attack looking to set up some good chances in their initial possessions.

the match was more or less what i had hoped for against the only unbeaten home side in the country. i knew this wasn't going to be easy, as the town carry a very big squad and are a fairly large club as far as their current division is concerned. it certainly wouldn't have been a huge upset if they'd scrapped a victory out of this one.

chris brunt looks to be back in form making a couple of good chances for himself, and graham dorrans once again took control of the central mid-field, scoring the first goal of the match to bring his season total to a club-leading 8.

the baggies went two goals up and clinched the match after chris wood came on as substitute. taking a well placed through ball from youssouf mulumbu, the teenage new zealand international used his considerable pace to move to the outside and past the last huddersfield defender, getting the ball on to his right foot and putting a well placed shot past the the town keeper with a great deal of poise and composure for his second score of the season.



the virtue of this baggies team is that it is no way reliant on a single player. while the tactics and play might suffer through chris brunt, jerome thomas, or graham dorrans being injured or not playing well, there is any number of players who are capable of spear-heading the albion attack. along with the three aforementioned players, marek cech, simon cox, luke moore, roman bednar and jonas olsson have all also variously taken turns in leading the team in attack and on at least one occasion each have produced a brace of goals. while graham dorrans came close against scunthorpe, no one at the club has yet scored a hat-trick on the season. in fact, with 48 goals scored in 23 league matches and a further 7 scored over 4 games in cup competitions, there are no less than 15 players who have contributed to the total offensive output.

after several disappointing results (including a 0-2 home loss to cardiff city) the baggies form seems to be on the up again just in time for two truly huge matches against 3rd place nottingham forest at home this friday, and away to league-leaders newcastle on monday night of the following week. they will then resume their FA Cup campaign against either newcastle or plymouth pending the 3rd round replay of that match.

the albion are certainly facing their biggest challenges of the season this next two weeks and will have to be in top form in order to gain maximum points and continue to make something of a cup run.

WBA 4-1 Bristol City

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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.

WBA 3-1 Reading F.C.

no TV for this one again, so i had to listen online.

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other than putting the baggies back on track, it didn't seem there was much to this match; although an albion victory is always a reason to cheer and would've been a fun match to watch, especially live at the hawthorns.

marek cech is emerging as my latest hero to wear the navy-and-white stripes. i can't understand why he was so under-used with tony mowbray in charge? it was our first game of the season without chris brunt where he wasn't sorely missed with both cech and jerome thomas filling in admirably as starters.

despite being signed to play left-back - which kept him out of the team with paul robinson being the gaffer's preferred starter - cech is a much more versatile player than that, and seems to be finding a more natural role as an attacking wide-midfielder. in fact, he was unlucky not to have scored a least a goal in this one as he had enough chances that he could've scored a hat-trick!

unfortunately, the baggies are still having problems with none of their strikers being able to find form since luke moore's recent injuries and the selling of craig beattie to swansea city. roman bednar was injured in the first five minutes, but luckily it was nothing more than a pinched nerve, which will see the czech international out of the side for only a game or two.



chris wood continued in doing a good job as substitute, and had a hand in the making of two of the albion goals.

this was a very typical performance by the albion; being slow to start and conceding first before finding 3 goals of their own. this was the third game of the season where the baggies have followed almost an identical script when faced with not particularly strong opposition at home. they gave away early goals to both plymouth argyle and doncaster rovers before scoring 3 themselves. however, they've been having to rely on the fullbacks and midfielders to produce their goals, with jerome thomas emerging as the 2 goal hero in this one and mulumbu adding the third to seal all three points. indeed, in all three of these wins - which in total produced 9 goals, only one was scored by a striker with chris wood's first goal for the club in the match with doncaster.

despite the victory - which is always a happy circumstance however it was made - nothing much has changed since last week. the strikers have to find their form before this team really starts living up to its potential. this was not a particularly good reading side and the score could've been 5 or 6-1. despite having moved back into first place, let's hope this happens sooner rather than later or west brom might find themselves struggling and playing in fits and starts.