Miller Gone for the Season

well, that's it... the gods of football are just not with the albion this year. the scans on ishamel miller's knee have revealed that the injury he sustained in sunday's match with pompey is not the medial ligament damage (with a minimum of 6 weeks recovery) that TM was expecting immediately following the match when talking to the press. it is much worse. the scans showed that the injury is actually cruciate knee ligament damage that will put miller out for the rest of the season, with a projected recovery time of 6-9 months.

the saddest aspect of this, i think, is that it looked a ball he should never have gone after so vigorously. but to his credit, i think he felt that a goal was coming and he was on pace, looking the most likely to finish in a series of fast breaking moves at goal that the baggies fashioned in the last 20 minutes of the game. his enthusiasm got the better of him and was mangled in going for a ball that always looked to be the portsmouth keeper's, david james. miller got his leg stuck under the sprawling, outstretched james as his body twisted awkwardly forward, causing him to take a head-over-heels tumble with his right leg still trapped, causing the injury. he also required a few stitches in his head.

the great shame of all this is that miller, after a slow start to the season, has scored 3 goals in 7 matches and has been improving with each subsequent performance. he was positively menacing and had been getting by far the better of the play against veteran pompey full-back and england international, sol campbell all day. you could see that he felt that he was on a goal after forcing a good save from david james; and had also managed to get on the end of a couple of good balls into the box. the biggest disappointment, i think, is that it takes miller out of the game at the worst possible time - not only to the baggies season; but as a professional footballer, it's possible that the development, experience and playing time he will miss could have a permanent affect on seeing him reach his true potential as a premier league heavy-weight. he will have lost an entire year now, in a profession that by nature sees generally short careers at the very top-flight. for his own sake, i hope he keeps his head together, but for a 21 year old - and in the game of football, 9 months is an eternity. there is only a certain number of years in your 20s that you can be as big, strong and fast as miller is right now - and he is at one of those crucial junctures where learning his craft is of the essence, and timely recovery and a good head-space is going to be critical for him.

as for the rest of us, i hope he comes back to the game and fulfills his potentials with only some time lost. i've seen too much football in my time that featured short careers and unfulfilled potentials. although it's far too early to be even talking about writing a guy off at 21, there is no telling of what the long term consequences might be, especially psychologically. there's the rest of the season gone - and with whatever might happen to the baggies from here on out - miller will not be a factor and will never know what he might have contributed and gone on to from his recent and developing goal-scoring form.

WBA 1-1 Portsmouth

today's match with portsmouth showed all the team's strengths - as well as (at least in some small measure) its weaknesses too; and tells us pretty fairly where we stand. i feel vindicated - as a long time supporter of his - that greening played so well in the first half and got the goal. i can't understand any of the knocks that he's gotten from fans this year. personally, i think he's the only one on the squad, at the moment, who consistently looks a premiership player week in and week out. despite dropping back into a midfield position in the second half, where he seemed to disappear a little bit he was effective enough - as always doing his part in the series of quick, incisive breaks that the albion created in the latter part of game.

even though there were the wasted finishes that we have all become used to seeing this year, the real problem that i could see today was, that going into the second half with a 1-0 lead, the baggies just weren't quite sure on how to play it. i mean the peter crouch goal, it was really quite a spectacular, and unstoppable shot - especially with the unfortunate flick it took off meite, redirecting the ball enough to send it over the outstretched carson; but it was the evidently less decisive and controlling play on the part of the albion at the the outset of the second half that allowed crouch the opportunity. that is really what led to the pompey goal. the baggies just didn't seem to know how to carry on straight-off with the way they had played in the first half - and it took the first fifteen minutes or so to re-establish themsleves when what they needed to do was keep going straight at pompey with miller and greening pushing forward looking for the second goal to put game beyond reach.

there's been so much talk about strikers with the faithful lately, as miller is still learning his craft and bednar is having trouble adjusting to the tempo of the premiership game, but i felt after watching today, it is our defensive play that is weakest - and especially in goal. i think meite played well on the right, and there were no real dangerous mistakes by robinson - although he has been displaying some bizarre decision making, and his outbursts probably don't help - but i have real questions about carson. a goalie should be directing things at the back and being decisive about indicating who should be coming for and taking the ball. i think that with the line-up at the back as it was today, mowbray's got it just about right with meite, olsson and robinson covering the central positions, but there's just nobody running the defense and we came within inches of repeating last week's performance when he bobbled that cross on the line. he also doesn't seem to have much of an eye for starting any moves forward. he is the main reason why our best defense is to stay on the attack and control the ball in midfield.

that's not to say that we don't need to start scoring more goals, but a clean sheet today would have preserved a victory - even though it never looked to be a low-scoring game, that's the way it turned out - and successful teams know how to win in the end on the unluckiest of days. yesterday's man. united match was a perfect example. they just could not put the ball into the sunderland net when they might have had at least 2 or 3, and they only just managed to win in injury-time.

we'll have to see about miller - i havent heard anything yet about his injury (and i'm checking the BBC every few minutes at this point) but he's going to be sorely missed if he's out for any length of time, and i thought he had a great game today. he should never have gone after that ball, but i guess that's just reflects his youthful enthusiasm and really wanting to score.

there's no doubt pompey played pretty abysmal football in the first half, and the baggies looked better than the 1-0 scoreline, and i still i can't really understand why greening didn't keep pressing forward in the second half, as it was the inability to get the second goal before the pompey equaliser that cost them the win. i think that TM should encourage him to go forward, in the tradition of tony brown - whose style (which was thought revolutionary at the time) was always to play the midfield as an attacking position. koren and valero, i thought were adequately improved at winning balls in the midfield; and koren looks to be adapting to the speed of the premiership, and that should leave greening free to go forward more.

brunt and morrison provided some really good wing play throughout (on the left and right respectively). it was of course brunt's brilliant free-kick that led to the greening goal, and i was surprised that morrison was so effective playing down either side - as i noticed him more and more coming down the left wing when greening had moved back into midfield. late in the game, he played a tremendous left-footed cross-field ball for bednar in a buildup that ended with brunt missing a great opportunity for a second goal... really entertaining stuff - just not winning stuff, yet.

again, on terms of performance of passing football it was a heartening display and i can see yet further improvement today at getting the ball into the box; but the baggies are now beginning to look pretty firmly established as the bottom team in the league, and i can't see anything more than a fight with blackburn and sunderland as to the order of finish for the bottom three. but more on their long term fate later...