WBA 1-0 Sunderland A.F.C.

live text replay

well, that's more like it!!! the baggies' fifth premier-league campaign has now begun in earnest with a 1-0 home victory over steve bruce's sunderland.

while it's easy enough to point to the difference in quality of opposition between sunderland and chelsea as partly accounting for the victory - as well as the marked difference between west brom's performance of this week and last - but the baggies' return to their aggressive midfield attacking game was really what won albion the match; and i'm still convinced this more natural style of play would have produced - and at very least - a more respectable scoreline in their opening match with the champions.

while retaining the 4-5-1 formation to which di matteo has committed his team, the baggies returned to the ploy of playing two central attackers - as they had done last year - and could have run this game out by a bigger scoreline, and probably deserved at least one more goal on the day. indeed, chris brunt had an exceptonal game and was unlucky when a sure-footed blast from about 25 yards out came booming back off the sunderland crossbar late in the game; and an earlier effort on the volley from a james morrison cross going just agonizingly wide.

whatever it is the gaffer is trying to do, having brunt playing next to dorrans as opposed to behind him is probably the optimal use of brunt's talents at premier league level. james morrison was much improved on the right wing and showed that he does indeed have the little bit of pace that brunt might not. the scottish international was able to penetrate down the flank and deliver several good crosses as well as the crucial final pass that sent new signing, peter odemwingie, through to score the winner.



the other big difference was jonas olsson's reintroduction to the starting line-up. the swedish centre-half's aggressive and spirited play added a great deal of raw determination and direction to a technically improving baggies' defence. this was reflected in scott carson's first clean-sheet of the season - also his first in the premier league in almost two years, and equalling his season total of the ill-fated 2008-09 campaign.

the hero of the day though has to be the albion's newest signing, peter odemwingie, who came into the side less than 48 hours earlier - without adequate time to even get his name in the matchday programme - and proved himself a real striker by scoring a striker's goal with 10 minutes of normal time left. the nigerian international from lokomotiv moscow played well throughout and came close to opening his baggies scoring account in the first few minutes on a near perfect through-ball from chris brunt.

while sunderland were outplayed by the baggies for most of the match, they still managed 50% possession. the black cats, however, continued their poor away form of last year, were uninspired and not of the technical standard or toughness that one would expect from a steve bruce team. they were blunt going forward, and only a couple of good long range strikes - both from open-play and a brace of free-kicks - by keiran richardson threatened to test scott carson at all. despite the prescence of darren bent sunderland were really restricted going forward and seemed to be missing the influence of striker, kenwyne jones, who transfered to stoke city at the outset of the season.

perhaps i was a little hard on di matteo, and the baggies in general, after the opening day thrashing at chelsea. after all, there probably isn't a more difficult fixture in the schedule and the occassion was no doubt overwhelming. while i can rail about the poor choice of playing chris brunt as a defender, or the exclusion of jonas olsson from the starting team, i must concede that chelsea at stamford bridge on opening day is sufficiently disorienting and no place to gauge a new environment. i suspect the baggies may have over-estimated their opponents on opening day and approached the match far too tentatively. on the other hand, every mistake made at chelsea was turned around and the team were scrupulous on their basic technical practices back at the hawthorns. defensive walls linked arms and kept their shape, while defenders threw themselves valiantly into blocks and tackles throughout the match.



marek cech was excellent again at left-back. having been the only one to have had a good game at stamford bridge, the slovakian international is performing with an assuredness and technical skill that has not been seen at this position for the albion in a long time. i think that cech may be one of those players whose game is more suited to the increased psychological demands of the premiership rather than the tougher and more physical style of the football league. gonzalo jara, however, did not acquit himelf so well and the gaffer might think about giving steven reid or even zuiverloon a look at the right-back position.

while i believe that di matteo has learned a lesson about how to use his midfielders and defenders, i suspect that he may start roman bednar in the more challenging away fixtures - like liverpool and manchester united - in order to hold up the ball going forward and press more at the front. either way, i hope they can shake off the opening day experience at stamford bridge and go into these fixtures with some measure of confidence and belief, as well as the will to play some football. otherwise, they run the risk of not having a meaningful, competetive away match until november 1st when the baggies travel to blackpool following visits to stamford bridge, anfield, the emirates and old trafford respectively.

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.

Chelsea 6-0 WBA

match text commentary


welcome back to the premier league!

there was one or two basic mistakes that roberto di matteo has made to begin west bromwich albion's fifth venture into the top football competition in the world.

first and foremost, chris brunt is hopelessly out of place as a holding mid-fielder. it's easy to see what the gaffer is thinking in wanting both a left-sided and right-sided player in the newly introduced 4-5-1 formation that we had all anticipated. but in partnership with youssouff mulumbu, the northern ireland international is playing too deep to get properly involved in the attacking game, as well as now being isolated from the wide positions where he is most effective. towards the end of the match, there was evidence that he might eventually be able adapt his attacking game working from a central position, but he surely isn't the tackler that being a defensive midfielder requires. i think it would have been better to play him on a more natural wing position with perhaps steven reid playing next to mulumbu.

without trying to draw any direct comparisons, it reminds me of the old story concerning don howe trying to transform tony brown into a more "complete" player by improving his defensive game...



i can't understand why it isn't more obvious to everyone that brunt is every bit as important to the albion attack as graham dorrans - and as such has to be played in more advanced positions. personally, i think he is being mistakenly forced into taking up what would otherwise have been jonathan greening's old duties. while this shows the gaffer's respect for his technical abilities, i think it ignores his natural intsticts as well as his real talents.

another problem is that the new attacking formation forces graham dorrans into too high a position where he is forced to attack the goal directly instead of creating opportunities. again, this an unfamiliar role for the young scottish international and he looked pretty lost and needs to be sitting in a deeper position - and with plenty of space in front of him - from which to control the game. while he delivered a decent direct free-kick in the second-half, just missing the top right-hand corner of the chelsea goal, he was otherwise surprisingly quiet and ineffective. again, i think that di matteo - along with a number of the club's supporters - has missed how important brunt is to the baggies' attacking game; and how desperately dorrans needs him when going forward.

the other main problem seemed to be the absence of jonas olsson - something i would not have anticipated. the tamas/ibanez partnership was ok for the first 40 minutes, but not as good as the tamas/olsson pairing we saw at the end of last season. of course, i think much of this has to with olsson's natural aggressiveness which is sometimes as much of a hindrance as an advantage; and the swedish centre half has always needed to learn to control his verbal confrontations with match officials. however, his aggressive spirit and volatile temperament were sorely missed today.



marek cech was the only defensive player to show any real spark; and james morrison was surprisingly unimpressive on the right-wing. i would suggest that di matteo give the newly arrived nicky shorey a go at left-back and use marek cech as the left-footed holding mid-fielder. above all, he's got to put brunt back on the wing and push dorrans further back.

scott carson should have done a better job in handling the free-kick that led to the first goal, as he palmed it straight back down into his own 6 yard-box inviting the chelsea attackers forward and allowing malouda to pounce on an easy goal.

this early defensive lapse aside, the baggies had every reason to take heart in their first-half performance; as, without really having anything gel going forward, the baggies kept the game tight after conceding in the 6th minute. they looked like they might be able to take a point from this game right up until injury time when a second goal from a chelsea free-kick put the game out of reach and beyond them in a way they could never have imagined up until that point.

the second goal was completely preventable, and it was chris brunt and gabriel tamas' inability to hold their position in the wall that created the gap for didier drogba to put the game at 2-0 - and beyond the capability of the baggies - just on the stroke of half-time. the complexion of the game turned completely at this point, and if the baggies had been able to get to the half only one-goal down, they certainly would have been able to consider the possibility of taking something by way of points from this match.

after half-time and once the third goal went in, it was hard for captain scott carson to rally the troops. while they were still in with a shout to keep the scoreline respectable, the spirit was gone and you could see that they just wanted to get out of this one and concentrate on their home opener against sunderland next week.

the last three chelsea goals were scored by a team that was really playing exhibition football by this point, showing the albion in very plain terms some of the worst of what this league has in store for them.





if there was anything positive to be taken from this game it was the performance of jerome thomas on the left-wing, who picked his game up right where he left off, with his pace always posing a threat. he was the only albion player who was consistently getting forward and able to advance the ball with several really good individual runs. simon cox, who came on as a substitute alongside ishmael miller, looked good in getting in a shot on the chelsea goal, showing hints that he might have something special about him at any level of football, and marek cech is a solid and well rounded technical player.

i was less upset with the baggies' performance today than i was with di matteo's team selection, which i see as the real culprit in west brom's opening day humiliation. the big complaint and main talking point prior to the start of the season - and even reaching as far as di matteo himself - has been the baggies' need for a quality striker. well i for one have had enough and don't want to hear another word until the gaffer gets his tactics and positions with the current squad straight!

Still You Don't Believe...

in trying to figure out a reasonable long-term aspiration for the baggies, i turned back time and analyzed the team's two spells spent in the old 1st division, and comprising a total of 33 years, following the second world war and ending with relegation in the 1985-86 season. this was followed by what was without doubt the worst period in the club's history, and saw the albion have to embark on a long restructuring of the organization, due to a loss of support, that to this day has not been fully realized.

during both periods (one of 23 years and another of 10), in which the team showed remarkably similar trajectories, the average league finish in the final tables is that of a 9th place ranking. one of the ironies is that in all this time, it is a position that they very infrequently finished in. instead, the pattern of albion teams has always been to have mid to low table finishes in the league, and to win the odd FA Cup. the team then invariably hits a zenith that produces a series of top five finisihes that brings their average up considerably. indeed, 3 consecutive top five finishes at the end of the 1950s was definitley one of the real high points for a team that variously included the likes of ronnie allen, ray barlow, joe kennedy, frank griffiths and bobby robson.

in the 1960s, the baggies were a solid mid-table team who quite extraordinarily appeared in 4 cup finals in 5 years, winning an FA Cup and league cup, as well as losing two league cup finals in the process. when the team of astle, clark, williams and osbourne was disbanded, their time was up and the baggies went down for a three year stay in the 2nd division.





unlike today - and at the end of 1975-76, west bromwich albion - now led by player/manager johnny giles - returned to the top tier of english football with a team that was good enough to achieve a 7th place finish right off the bat in their initial season back in the top flight. alas, this is no longer possible with huge gaps in the levels of money between the top 5-10 clubs, the mid to lower table sides, the premier league relegation strugglers, west bromwich albion and the championship league. there are 4 or 5 distinct levels of footbal where the ideal is to have but 2.

to end their place in this cycle, the baggies need to aim for a solid 13th place finish. in fact, they should look at 13th place in the table and target it as rightfully theirs, in the same fashion that top 4 teams do. they might even consider making it their 4 year consolidation plan! a 17th place finish to start, and move up one place in the standings four years running!




if the current baggies sqaud can manage the form of yesteryear when 10th to 17th place finsishes were what was about expected, coupled with the odd cup run, they might one day find themselves in position to challenge for a place in europe. if there is a positive future for west brom in the premier league, it will have to be a scenario similar to this or none at all.

on the eve of the fifth campaign that west bromwich albion embark on in the holy grail of english football against a chelsea team that won the double last year, i can't really hope for anything more than not to get beaten too badly. but then again, as an albion supporter, one always hopes for that odd chance... an inexplicable convergence of energies and intanglibles where the highly improbable becomes manifest. anyway, reading, wigan, hull city and burnley have shown us in the last few seasons that if you're going catch one of the top teams out and take all three points, you're more likely to do it early on in the season and before anyone's hit their stride.

here's to the investment of hope in a seemingly impossible season and west brom's rightful 13th place finish ahead of wolves, wigan, blackburn, bolton, west ham, newcastle and blackpool!

let us hope for some small measure of joy and success from this season now upon us.

The Premier League Upon Us...

as one of the few - and perhaps the only - non-UK bloggers who writes extensively about the baggies, i am reminded by the pre-season of my relative isolation from my subject material.

there are fans who post to online forums, as well as professional journalists of all kinds - and including bloggers - who live in the birmingham area, attend the training sessions and reserve matches, as well as keep an eye on the comings and goings at the hawthorns' parking lot. chris lepkowski - whose blogging, journalism and audio/visual work can be found in the birmingham mail, is probably the most pre-eminent west brom journalist, and his name comes up quite often as a source of accurate news amongst the baggies' online community.

my main source of information - as well as my primary access to most baggies matches this last year - has been the ALBION RADIO transmissions, through the club's website; and featuring dave bowler, west brom's head publications editor, with either duncan jones or chris hall doing the match commentary. i write about west bromwich albion and their coverage through live digital-audio commentaries, overseas television broadcasts and wide ranging, diverse online media resources.





in short, i am the first person i know of to report on west bromwich albion football club through a daily analysis of online digital media - and from an overseas perspective. while the myriad disadvantages to reporting on the baggies from 3000 miles away should be evident enough, there are several advantages that might be easy to overlook. while the quality of "objectivity" is not necessarily a virtue, in and of itself, being removed from the pessimistic humour of the black country - which often converts to an unnatural, painful despair over the subject of football - there is a negativity that never colours my writing. i consider myself the quintessesntial, naive optimist as far as my support for the albion goes - a stance that is much easier to maintain from a distance.

my devotion to the albion aside, there is absolutely nothing black country about me, and i look on my visits to the hawthorns as a day-trip to a strange and exotic corner of the world where one goes for no other reason than football. it is a singularly spiritual experience in a suburban industrial wasteland.

while i do always hope for the best, i don't start every premier league campaign projecting a comfortable mid-table finish. for example, when kevin phillips left and the next signing the club made was gianni zuiverloon, i wasn't particularly filled with confidence as i knew that the club had lost a player that they weren't going to be able to replace, and this wasn't going to be as good a team going into the premiership as the side that had won the championship title the previous season. things just didn't feel right. i still hoped for a mid-table finish, but by late october - and after a good start to the season - it was clear that the club was in trouble. i still remained positive on the issue of survival right up until the loss to liverpool saw them dropped back down to the championship for the following season.





while i have been a bit worried by the lack of goals in this past pre-season - and i have to keep reminding myself that defensive organization was probably the gaffer's main concern. i mean, why else would di matteo play chris brunt as a defensive mid-fielder?!?! ishmael miller knocked in a couple of goals, but more crucially the baggies didn't concede more than one goal per match in any of their pre-season friendlies, so in that sense, it has probably been a fair success for the head-coach and his team.

most educated pundits haven't foreseen the baggies having any trouble with their attacking game at premieship level anyway, and are generally more positive about the albion's ability to find goals - and from a wide ranging source of players - than many of their most die-hard supporters. west brom boasted 19 different scorers last year, 4 with 10 goals or more. the defence, on the other hand, has been a different matter althogether. it has been evident, however, that RDM has focused quite specifically on this long time problem and addressed it with a group of successful summer signings that will go a long way to making the baggies more solid at the back.

it's expected that a large number of teams will be playing a variation of the continental 4-5-1 attacking formation this season, and it's become pretty evident from the recent signing that west bromwich albion will be one of them. football seems to be moving into a new era as teams playing the standard 4-4-2 formation become fewer and far between. indeed, variations of the 4-5-1 were decidedly predominant among teams at this year's world cup; and the success of these tactics in recent UEFA competitions suggests it will soon be the preferred formation of most top professional clubs. the albion had already started playing this system under tony mowbray, who abandoned the idea after ishmael miller's injury. it was, however, revived by roberto di matteo after last year's defeat to nottingham forest. with a free-scoring mid-field, it was something that worked well and was still an enterprising and entertaining prospect when going forward.

there have been more popular teams at the hawthorns over the years than the club as it is now. and i've never really felt like the supporters were behind roberto di matteo the same way they were with either gary megson or tony mowbray at the heighth of their successes with the club. it is a wide held belief, for example, that there hasn't been a really solid all-around team since bob taylor and darren moore were with the club and the baggies began their long-time flirtation with the premier league. while more recently, many supporters have yet to come to terms with kevin phillips' departure for blues, which came about largely due to the chairman sticking to his guns on club policy towards terms of contracts offered to older players.





this year, however, i am expecting a mid-table finish, and i believe this to be the best albion team yet to be going into the premiership. by virtue of the process of elimination this probably makes the current squad the best west brom side since some time in the early 80s before the baggies were relegated from the old 1st division, not to return to the top-flight again for 16 years.

enough of the current team has seen life in the premier league before, and no doubt it will be much less daunting than the last campaign. expecially when everyone involved realizes the quality and potentials of this particular albion side compared to that of previous premiership campaigns.

while the management has made a number of excellent signings that will make the baggies a decidedly more defensive team, they still need another striker who can play the 4-5-1 formation. ishmael miller is still a bit of an unknown quantity at premiership level, and if simon cox can get into position he's capable of finishing with the best of them. players like gianni zuiverloon might even have an easier time with the decidedly less physical game of the premier league than that played in the championship. and there are many new faces in the squad that we have yet to see how the whole thing gels. it could all be a bit of a surprise!

Uncle Cyrille Says...

The Black Hole of the Premier League

west brom - as with almost all the other teams who've been identified as potential "strugglers" in the premier league - are having more trouble than usual making their pre-season signing targets.

while the baggies have cleverly kept together an all important core group of players, consolidated their targeted loan signings from last year, and have made some important new acquisitions in specific and identifiable defensive positions - including a second goalie, they have been unable to get any interest from suitable strikers at premiership level; and - if i'm to take the current postings in various online discussion forums as any indication - the supporters are beyond impatient. take a look at the shattering negativity of some of the more recent posts and subsequent discussions on BBC 606, for example.

there is a wide-held belief that it's all down to chairman, jeremy peace, not making an adequate amount of money available for transfers and player wages. i don't think it's quite that simple. for sure, JP has requisites, hard-line precedents, and a measured limit on what can be spent. but much of mr. peace's caution derives from the fact that the baggies simply don't have a rich owner, benefactor, corporate interest, or any other source of benevolent, interested, and ambitious money with which to strengthen the squad. therefore, it's got to be done in a measured and careful manner, with managable goals, that will ensure that the club is always at least competitive for a place in the top-flight, and does not go the way of leeds, sheffield wedneday, sheffield united, charlton, norwich, southampton, portsmouth and hull (to name just a few) who have all run afoul of what can happen to a club when it spends premier league money and doesn't live up to top-flight competitive requirements.

hull city, for example, played two seasons in the premiership before being relegated, but spent something more like three seasons worth of money in doing so. while the parachute payments will help with the club's debt, they will lose much of their squad and may eventually end up in a relegation battle at the wrong end of the championship. no matter what other criticisms you may have - and with JP as chairman - you will never see this at west bromwich albion.

as always, teams like manchester united, liverpool, arsenal, tottenham, manchester city and chelsea have a definite edge in attracting players. while this has long been true, it hasn't always been about the money! in the past, and for young footballers looking to get into their national sides or just expand their professional opportunities, these were traditionally clubs where one went to fulfill their aspirations.

but with the focus now shifting ever towards the financial considerations as the bottom line, sportsmanship and its attendant aspirations have been banished to an antiquated afterthought. coupled with the structure of the premier league, both financially and in terms of the number of player personnel that a team can now employ - the gap in between the top-half of the premiership and that of the bottom-half is finally and glaringly evident in a way it never quite has been before. the dream is more than over. it has been trashed and forgotten. even everton, the team that holds the record for the number of consecutive years in the english top flight - and a club that has always held its own with the other top sides, both on and off the pitch, - is now a second grade team with apparently limited resource; while the likes of wigan, west brom, and bolton are now treated as decidedly undesirable destinations to look for a career move.

nobody, it seems, is signing anybody.

indeed, the situation is so bad that roberto di matteo has now stated in an interview with BBC WM that he doubts there will be anymore signings between now and the beginning of the season. personally, i found it to be a bit out of character for di matteo, who usually does not discuss internal football politics with the press, and took it as a statement to the supporters demonstrating that this is the way things are at the moment and that he's as frustrated as they are. the all important required striker is just not there, and there's probably not much point in worrying about it until september or the right opportunity presents itself.

i think the baggies can take heart at the recent resurgence of midlands football in the premier league. with the relative and recent successes of wolves, birmingham, stoke city, and a squad that includes ishmael miller, roman bednar, simon cox, graham dorrans, chris brunt and a series of new defensive signings, i feel that things could be starting out a whole lot worse for the albion than they are.