WBA 0-1 Stoke City F.C.

match text commentary


a friend of mine asked me how situations like this perpetuate themselves. for example, how does one team so completely dominate the results against another team of similar size and resource year after year, so as to become the nemesis of the other... a so-called "bogey" team, as it were?

is it the style and ethos of one club that is particularly successful against the style and ethos of the other? is it some inexplicable cosmic force at work, imposing a kind of astrological status quo? what is it?!? i had to think about it for awhile. the answer soon became obvious.

the fact is - and even in the world of modern football where players no longer spend entire careers at a single club - no matter what change in personnel has come to pass at the two respective clubs in the intervening time between one match and the next, there is always a couple of guys who were there the last time the two played each other. with the fixture comes a trepidation on one side, and an assured confidence on the other that becomes fixed, so that the failure of the one and the success of the other becomes a kind of inherited psychological pre-set. stoke city have now lost just one match and drawn 6 in the last 28 times the clubs have met. the albion must dread this fixture as much as any they have to play at this point.





oooooooh!!! stoke city... boogie boOGIE BOOGIE!!!

and so it was, once again. only seconds away from a draw - perhaps the best they could have hoped for after two goal-saving stops by stoke keeper, asmir begovic - when baggies' goalie, ben foster, was not quick enough in taking a long ball coming back at him on the edge of the box. baggies' centre-half, gabriel tamas, looked momentarily to be in two minds, but with foster shouting that he had it - and was indeed better positioned to take the ball and clear than tamas - all the romanian centre-half had to do was block out stoke substitute, ryan shotton, and shepherd the ball back for foster to take on the hop.

shotton got past tamas and foster's hesitation allowed for the stoke defender to literally nick the ball off the tips of foster's fingers and put it in an open goal. it was sunday league football stuff, and not the first time we've seen it at the hawthorns. but the gaffer was adamant that by today's standards, shotton's challenge was a foul and he came in with his leg high and his studs showing.

hodgson acknowledged that foster and tamas shouldn't have got themselves into such a mess at the back. truly - and while it probably was a foul - foster should have come more decisively for the ball, been a little more aggressive and risked taking a set of studs in the chest. at least there would have been no doubt about as to whether it was a foul or not. hodgson stated that he was particularly aggrieved after having seen the replay.





unlike playing against manchester united and chelsea, this game was thoroughly dominated by the baggies. they had the better of the possession, they created better chances, and they started and finished the stronger of the two teams. jonas olsson had kenwyn jones in his back pocket all day, and gabriel tamas played an intelligent and useful game, considering he was booked early in the first-half and played the remaining 83 minutes on a yellow card. the stoke goal was their only shot on target in the whole of the match while the baggies managed six.

the best scoring chance in the match came when somen tchoyi placed a perfect cross into the box which shane long headed powerfully at goal. while the final ball was pretty much straight at begovich, long had gotten enough power behind it that it required quick hands on the part of the stoke keeper to keep the baggies from going 1-0 up.

again, this was much better on TV than it was as audio commentary. particularly the second-half. it seemed as though the albion were resigned to meet the long ball tactics that stoke played throughout the first-half with the like. it made for a second-half that never really got going, and left the albion radio commentary team to lament the lack of flow and pace that characterized the first 30 minutes of the second period; and suggest that it may have been a tactical mistake on the gaffer's part.





the real story of this game, is that it brings home the immediacy of the premier league and seeing a possible nine points - of which the baggies should have taken at least three - as well as some good football go for nothing. the albion will need four points from the next six or they're going to find themselves in trouble and growing desperate for points with roughly 20% of the season gone. in the football league you could probably drop the first four or five games and still go on to win the division.

meanwhile, and with the summer transfer window closing, we have to start to worry a little about peter odemwingie. he played fifteen minutes against chelsea, and we certainly caught a glimpse of what he and shane long might be like in a forward pairing. but he was out of the line-up (and not even on the bench) this week due to continued problems with his ankle. in truth, this has been bothering him in varying degrees since he got to the club, and i would now start to be concerned that it might be something from which he may never fully recover and will hinder his last few years in professional football.

whatever the case, i have an ultimate faith in roy hodgson, and individual technical errors aside, he has managed to put together a much more stern and disciplined defence within the structure of a 4-4-2 set up. we can only hope that this somewhat deflating result won't erode any of the team's essential confidence this early in the season.

WBA 0-3 Stoke City F.C.

match text commentary


at the end of the day, i couldn't help thinking about an old piece of documentary film that shows an arsenal team of the early 1970s pushing their way past a referee coming down the tunnel at half-time.

the players nudge, jostle, elbow, shoulder, bump and shove the ref and his two linesmen as they go past, all the while maintaining the pretense of nonchalance, not noticing and looking the other way. the three men are left clearly shaken and shocked staring in confused disbelief at the crowd of men which has just pushed past them. before they are afforded anytime to recover there is don howe himself, coming up the rear, red-faced and veins bulging in his neck, screaming frantically in the face of the poor man:

"HOW COULD YOU MAKE A CALL LIKE THAT?!?!? EH, EH?!?! THAT WAS THE MOST DISGRACEFUL THING I'VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE!!!! JUST BLOODY DISGRACEFUL!!! DISGRACEFUL!!!"

or words to that effect.

football is a human game and referees, over the years, have regularly been bullied, coerced and cajoled, through verbal, psychological and even physical abuse in order to intimidate them and affect their decisions. nowadays, managers and supporter alike are constantly moaning about poor refereeing decisions, which - thanks to modern video technology - are more evident than they ever have been before.

tony pulis has taken advantage of the current climate, and inspired by some recent questionable calls which have gone against his team, has launched a well-publicized attack on PREMIER LEAGUE referees - even going so far as to propose a system of promotion and relegation for match officials, just as you would with football clubs.

the genius of making a challenge in such a public manner is that any referee he encounters in the next two or three weeks may give him the benefit of the doubt on some big calls just in order to prove mr. pulis wrong.

it's quite a brilliant ploy and managed to win stoke city a penalty that no other team in the country would have been awarded on the day, and a second that also would have been highly questionable in any other circumstance.



as usual, i listened to the match live on ALBION RADIO and watched the delayed TV broadcast later that evening. it is often very interesting to note the differences between a match heard only as audio commentary - with a heavy baggies bias - and the neutral assessments of the mainstream TV announcers. the two experiences can be very different, but as far as the first penalty went, one and all - partisan and neutral alike - agreed that the decision was bad, it had been a dive, and kenwyne jones should have been given a yellow-card and not a penalty decision.

even the great trevor francis (whose heart is birmingham city blue) working the TV commentary, as he does for many of the nationally broadcast matches, was emphatic it was poor call.

"that was never a penalty in a million years!" he declared upon seeing the video replay of the incident.

the baggies have been missing jonas olsson, and it will still be several weeks before he begins to make his way back into the team. so it was another truly disastrous blow this week that chris brunt picked up a pulled hamstring playing for northern ireland in last week's international friendlies. without brunt's attacking creativity and skill on set pieces, the baggies were lost on free-kicks and corners, as peter odemwingie curiously stepped forward to take every dead-ball situation. as a result, the albion wasted 90% of their opportunities with the nigerian striker's corners woefully over-cooked and his free-kicks just as bad.

i couldn't understand this at all. i would have thought that without either graham dorrans or nicky shorey in the side, that free-kicks might have been given to gabriel tamas, and corner kicks would be taken by morrison, or the two wingers, thomas and barnes, respectively. however, odemwingie seemed to want to take everything in sight and it simply didn't work.

i also got the feeling that roberto di matteo was out of ideas this week. where he has been a bold and brilliant tactician, making critical substitutions and implementing tactical gambits that have changed the course of more than a few matches, he just had nothing left and was over-looking some of the most basic necessities in the team selection. the gaffer had otherwise picked a pretty similar team to that which has started in the last three or four games, with a few minor changes and variations due to brunt's injury and the physical size of the stoke team.



for example, marek cech got the nod at left-back over nicky shorey presumably because he is better in the air and thus a more suited defender against a team playing the long ball.

giles barnes got one of his few starts of the year. although he still doesn't have a full 90 minutes in him - demonstrating how lengthy and difficult it is to come back from a major injury - he was easily the most lively albion player throughout the first half and showed his worth as a powerful and pacey winger.

the statistics tell a lot about this game, as well as the nature of the PREMIER LEAGUE at its ugliest. over the course of the match the baggies pretty much played twice as much football as the potters. they had 63% of the possession, outshot them by 15 attempts on goal (8 on target) to 6 (4 on target), and won 8 corners as opposed to city's 3. but, playing football doesn't always win games in this league, and the 3-0 scoreline was in no way indicative of the football actually played on the day. while the baggies stats looked impressive, they made nothing of their evident superiority on the ball.

the albion had something knocked out of them at blackpool, and i think the squad is still collectively suffering the psychological effects of that particular match. individually, jerome thomas has not been the same player since, and has dropped into a pattern of second-guessing himself. while gonzalo jara looked very uneven and appears to have lost some confidence on his return to the team following his wild and vicious tackle on luke varney and subsequent three-game suspenion. in hindsight, the chilean full-back must now be painfully aware that he played a central part, with a most negative effect, in what now appears to have been a pivotal moment that saw the beginnings of a sudden and massive down-swing in the team's fortunes.



peter odemwingie, who did not play in the blackpool game, has started to try to do everything himself, and james morrison has only sporadically been able to get involved in any of the last few matches.

at the moment, youssouf mulumbu is the only midfield player who hasn't really suffered any lapse in form. in fact, the congolese international has been playing some of his best football of late, as well as demonstrating a sense of leadership in trying to push the team forward.

if i was roberto di matteo, i would think about fielding a few major - and probably radical - changes for the trip to everton next weekend.

i don't really know what the current political situation is at the hawthorns with thursday's loan deadline coming up - but i would start roman bednar (provided he hasn't gone out on loan) ahead of odemwingie, and i would also start simon cox, no matter what. the team is at a desperate need for goals, and they have to give a start some proven goal scorers. i would also start graham dorrans - especially if chris brunt remains unavailable. if he can begin to find any of his top-form, he's capable of scoring goals as well making them. even if he doesn't, they need to play a dead-ball specialist, at least. i'd also start somen tchoyi and give jerome thomas a rest.

meanwhile, i would be impatient for chris brunt's return and praying that jonas olsson is fit sooner than later.