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.

Leicester City 1-2 WBA

live text replay

i started writing this blog as a therapy for having become obsessed with the albion and as a way to deal with the misery of last season in the premier league. it was a terrible disappointment after the expectation that this team had created through their brilliant footballing performance in winning the championship and reaching the FA cup semi-final the year before.

ron atkinson even said earlier this year that he had thought that the baggies would go up and achieve what would become a long-term consolidation as a premier-league club. their utter failure to do so has had a special frustration from the point of view of the club's overseas supporters, among whom, i have the privilege to count myself.

you see, up until this year it was pointless and impossible for me to subscribe to the ALBION WORLD audio commentary service offered on the club's website. it wasn't so much a technical or regional problem that prevented me the ability to do so, but rather, an ethical consideration. the problem was that the service would only work for WINOWS operating systems. i do not use microsoft products; nor am i a MAC user. i use a regular PC, but several years ago (and after years of using "pirated" WINDOWS operating sytems) i started playing around with several FREE and OPEN-SOURCE operating systems, commonly known as LINUX.

it is possible - and a great many people do this for practical reasons - to have a PC run multiple operating systems. you can have multiple versions of WINDOWS and LINUX variants on a single machine; and for the first few months i ran both WINDOWS 2000 and SLACKWARE LINUX on the same PC. as soon as i had figured out how to do everything in the LINUX environment that i could in WINDOWS, i abandoned microsoft completely. i came to adopt this idea as a philosophical concept. there are many reasons other than the practical consideration of having a faster computer not to use WINDOWS, most of which are, in fact, ethical in nature. but i won't get in to that here and now...

while i am able to pay expensive cable television subscription fees and get a full complement of premier-league games, championship matches were few and far between. in 2007-08, i saw the baggies 4 times: 2 league matches, and the FA Cup quarter and semi-finals. the rest of the season was followed on the BBC live text commentaries. but with the baggies back in the premiership and on weekly TV, i had the greatest hopes for the next season.



after the home fixture with portsmouth last year, and ishmael miller was gone for the season, i knew the albion were in trouble so i started to blog. a great deal of my early blogging had to do with the fact that i was going to "lose" the baggies as they would be back in the championship and limited to 2 or 3 televised matches a year; and as a committed free software user i couldn't justify installing WINDOWS on my computer for any reason!

two things changed drastically this last year though. first, the service that most clubs in the premier and football leagues use for live audio commentary on the internet changed so that it was now compatible with MAC and LINUX operating systems. as well, the football league had made a deal to broadcast 60 championship and league 1 matches on TV this year, and they're all being carried on SETANTA SPORTS CANADA. this means that all west brom matches would now be available to me, either on TV or through the internet as live audio commentary. besides that, i was lucky enough to have been in england this last september and had the most fortunate opportunity to see the baggies play twice at home in the space of four days.

anyway, the point of this rumination is to wonder what i'm doing here anymore? does anybody read me? does it matter? is what i've got to say - besides expressing the woes of trying to follow a team like the albion from overseas - worth the time i put in? can one accurately assess a situation from thousands of miles away and with radio commentary as their main receiving medium?

actually, i'm surprised at how much i'm able to understand about what's going on with the club. i heard two points made by the commentary team on ALBION RADIO prior to the leicester city match that were almost verbatim observations as i had made them in my blog of the previous week reviewing the watford match. it seems that what had been obvious to me had also been obvious to the commentary staff - and worthy enough to mention on the broadcast.



of course, i'm not sure that it would be the same had i not been to the hawthorns in september, or seen the first few matches of the season on TV. there are details that can only be fully received through direct visual information. for example, when i saw the baggies play at the hawthorns it was pretty clear that the left-back, joe mattock, consistently came up very high in attack and was often in danger of being caught out of position. in fact, on the tuesday night match that i attended v doncaster rovers, the albion gave up an early goal precisely as a result of the young full-back's poor positional play. this was a weakness in the team that persisted, was consistent and definitely cost a couple of goals along the way. in the last few games, however, it seems like he's learned his lesson and is keeping his position much better. you need at least an initial visual experience to make a fully informed assessment of a simple situation such as this one.

while life is not perfect, in that i still don't believe in DRM, which is the various intrusive forms of controlling information online so that it can't be downloaded or copied - as is the case with all premier and football league video and audio content - the situation is at least now a reasonable compromise. i have a paid membership account - made through the albion website - which allows me to access any of the live audio streams of premier and football league clubs that have opted in to the PLAYER setup.

still, the question goes unanswered. should i be writing about football if i'm not saying anything different from any other football writers?

i'm not sure. but i will, at least, chronicle this season - and at the end, make an accompanying video as well - as it has become possible for me to keep up with and gather the information needed to do so; and ultimately, i guess, because i can't get the albion out of my head!

WBA 5-0 Watford F.C.

i was really worried about this one after seeing watford absolutely demolish sheffield wednesday by a score of 4-1 on TV last friday. it was really good football. but if you want to come to the hawthorns and try to play football at this level against the albion you're going to get beat 9 times out of 10.

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as crystal palace and - to a lesser extent - swansea city showed, the only way to really beat this baggies team in the championship is by employing the most negative tactics... 10 men behind the ball and a single striker looking for counter-attack opportunities. but playing football? you probably aren't going to win.

so it was as the baggies pasted watford 5-0 at the hawthorns last saturday.


i don't think too many albion fans would have much to criticize from this performance. it was another clean-sheet for scott carson, five goals all coming by different sources, and a victory achieved largely without chris brunt, who came on for only the last 25 minutes and was relatively inconsequential to the outcome of the match.




there were several factors about this match which will make it seem a like a crucial turning point in the season if the baggies do well in the next few games, and ultimately, gain promotion on the year. first off, this was a tight and well executed performance throughout. i had to listen to the match on the ALBION RADIO, and the infrequency with which the fullbacks were mentioned in the commentary is one indication of very solid work at the back. i only remember meite's name coming up twice in the whole broadcast, for example, and that's always a good sign for a defender.

while not improving his overall performance - and still looking kind of out of it - luke moore returned to doing a strikers' job, scoring in the 48th minute to end a drought for the team's forwards that has lasted since september 19th. gianni zuiverloon netted his first goal for the club, and simon cox scored perhaps the best of the goal of the game to open his league goals account for the albion and looks to have earned a place in the starting team.



i hope the baggies have learned their lessons over the first third of the season, as the upcoming away match at leicester city is possibly the toughest prospect that the club have had to face all season. i saw city play QPR on TV last week and on their day they are probably the most all-around solid side in the division. leicester are excellent at the back - having the second best defensive record in the league - and although they play with less possession than other teams might, they know how to take advantage of their opportunities when they come.

the last time that west brom had a big win, they followed up with a string of poor performances which started at home in a 0-1 loss to crystal palace. they can't afford another run of poor results at this point of the season. if the albion can continue with last week's form, then they can beat leicester city at home. it's as simple as that. but, this is a definite case where the defensive game is going to have to be solid, as i can't see this leicester side allowing the baggies' forwards as much space, time or opportunity as they had last saturday.

Coventry City 0-0 WBA

at the beginning of this year's season i found myself waiting eagerly for saturday to roll around. three out of the first four or five albion matches were televised; and by the time i went to england in early september they were on a five-game unbeaten streak. i attended both of the next two games at the hawthorns, which saw them extend the run further, by virtue of two 3-1 victories over plymouth and doncaster respectively; and the day before i came home the baggies thrashed middlesbrough at the riverside 0-5. i listened to that match live on the internet through ALBION RADIO, and returning home i was able to see it as a repeat broadcast on SETANTA SPORTS CANADA. there was every reason to feel positive and continue to look forward to saturdays with the gleeful anticipation that a winning side breeds in its supporters.

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since my return to canada, however, west brom have been knocked out of the league cup 2-0 by a young arsenal side, dropped two home matches 0-1 to both crystal palace and swansea city, lost away to barnsley by a score of 3-1, and produced two 0-0 results away to preston north end and coventry city - their only win in the last six league matches being a 3-1 home victory against a decidedly poor reading side.

i now wait for match-day with a desperate hope that the albion can find their early season form again, and dread the prospect of more losses and goalless draws. what is going on here?!?!

the truth is, even during their unbeaten run, the team has not yet lived up to its potential. but instead of the break-out that i was expecting that would see at least one of the strikers finding a hot hand, and the baggies taking a clear-cut control of the division, i now find myself waiting desperately for another win, anticipating a struggle for a play-off spot, and listening to everyone talk about bloody kevin phillips again!

when tony mowbray left the club to go and manage celtic, west brom did well in finding roberto di matteo. while i had my doubts about him at first, he was able to instantly revitalize many of the players who had either struggled or gone unused under mowbray, and i don't think there is a single albion supporter who didn't eventually welcome what seemed at the time a real breath of fresh air.



i have found that there are generally two schools of thought as to what the baggies need at the moment. one group is concerned about the albion's ability to keep clean-sheets and improve defensively, while the other believes that they must find goals up front, with only 2 of the last 15 coming by way of the strikers. i am of the latter opinion.

the fact is that an albion striker has not scored a goal since september 19th, and all the clean-sheets in the world will do nothing but produce goalless draws without a decent offensive output; and you can't expect the midfield and fullbacks to produce the goals with the frequency needed at the moment - especially with chris brunt, the club's leading scorer, out of the side due to injury.

what is confusing me most is the gaffer's reluctance to play simon cox, who in league 1 and playing for swindon town, was joint top-scorer in the country last year. while his start against rotherham in the league cup was not a particularly distinguished performance, he did score the winning goal. as well, he redeemed himself further by playing well in the subsequent cup fixture with arsenal, but has not been able to break in as a starter in the league matches; and his appearances as a substitute have not given him enough time to settle in.

with both the january transfer window and the return of ishmael miller still a couple of months away, i cannot understand why he has been given only one start (v plymouth) in the league this year, with di matteo preferring to play luke moore, roman bednar and even young chris wood over the ex-swindon town sharp-shooter?



i would suggest that it's time to make a change and take some chances. i was surprised today, for example, that di matteo did not start cox. bednar was out of today's match - having been injured in the first few minutes against reading - and with luke moore having lost his early season form, i didn't think the gaffer had much of a choice. instead, he once again started moore, and had midfielder robert koren playing in an advanced position, similarly to how mowbray would use jonathan greening in the "ishmael miller project" formation of last year.

personally, i would have started wood and cox in a regular 4-4-2 formation today and see how they got on. despite only one goal on the season, wood has shown some skill and proved useful at using his size and strength to hold the ball up, but we still don't know anything as to how simon cox plays at this level in the league.

i think the gaffer was after victory through keeping a clean sheet today, and assuming that one of the midfielders could score at least one goal, this might have been the case. but i just don't think that a defensive approach is the way an albion team should be playing. especially if none of the strikers are scoring. while the albion have had a couple of excellent defensive teams over the years (the 92-93 team, for example, had 27 clean-sheets whilst recording 17 1-0 victories), they still needed the likes of cyrille regis, laurie cunningham, bob taylor and andy hunt to knock in goals up front.

there are no mid-week matches this week, and it is very likely that bednar will be back in the side next saturday against watford. still, i will be disappointed and perplexed if simon cox does not start next week.

WBA 0-1 Swansea City F.C.

this was a bad day all around. my internet was not working for much of the match, and i had to keep tabs on the game through the BBC live text commentary when i was able to.

i caught the first fifteen minutes and the last five of the first half on ALBION RADIO; then i could only connect for the last fifteen minutes of the game.

live text replay

with city coming to the hawthorns, this was the toughest match and the most in-form performance of any team that the baggies have had to deal with thus far this year - including the opener against newcastle. the albion were lucky enough on the day to hang on to first place, by virtue of the toon's loss to scunthorpe - so thank god for life in the championship! however, this can't go on without seeing an eventual downward movement in the standings.



the baggies have now dropped 11 out of the last 15 points available.

while no one played particularly well at all yesterday, i was still expecting one of the strikers to break out and start scoring. in light of this, yesterday's loss was doubly ironic.

the arrival of roberto di matteo saw countless individuals on the team re-vitalized and the new gaffer seems to know how to use his players better than tony mowbray did. both luke moore and craig beattie started out the season looking completely different players to last year. moore scored a couple of goals just for fun, and beattie really found his touch in the cup games, putting in 2 real quality goals against rotherham.



since then, moore has not been able to find his form following a short recurring injury, and beattie was sold to swansea city the day after the cup game against rotherham. roman bednar has not scored since the match away to middlesbrough. simon cox has still to open his league goals account, and he needs more opportunity as a starter. while chris wood has been doing a good job at holding up the ball and setting up goals, he still has only scored once on the season.

the double irony of yesterday's loss is that craig beattie, who scored the winning goal for swansea, is still one of albion's top scoring strikers on the year. the problem could not have been illustrated more clearly nor the reality of the moment more stark.

i found it disappointing when they sold beattie, as he was playing well and would've been useful outside his role as a starter for cup games; but i did not think it would have an impact on the club's form. today it appears to reflect a minor disaster.

WBA 3-1 Reading F.C.

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

live text replay

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.

PNE 0-0 WBA

i woke up at 7.00 AM last saturday morning to watch this one live on SETANTA SPORTS CANADA. it was a little better than the last two albion performances, and considering that this is a fixture that the baggies have not won in 50 years, seems a poor result only by virtue of their recent back to back losses, home to crystal palace and away to barnsley.

graham dorrans was the best of the baggies' players on the day and seems to have gotten over the idea that he is the next paul scholes. this was illustrated most clearly in the fact that the young mid-fielder had the only real clear-cut scoring chances on the day, and a quick reaction by lillywhites' keeper, andy lonergan on a late header by dorrans in front of goal was all that was needed for both sides to maintain a clean-sheet.

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i haven't really got any complaints; although, i still don't think we've seen the best of this year's baggies yet and can only hope that they get the timing right in terms of form over the course of the year. when the baggies last won promotion from this division they spent most of the season in 2nd place behind watford and later stoke city. both watford (in the long-term) and the potters (in the short-term) were prime example of what happens when you peak too early in this division. watford fell away the last 15-20 games of the season and finished sixth; good enough for a play-off spot, and stoke - who rather looked like running away with the division after taking over 1st place in march - similarly ended on a run of poor results and the baggies won the championship trophy.

the problem right now is solely the lack of offensive output on the part of the forwards. it's all very well to imagine the outcome of what in themselves must be highly speculative talks - with sol campbell and thinking about getting the team playing higher quality stuff at the back; but, more importantly, the strikers have to start scoring goals before the albion start winning consistently again.



maybe it's a good thing that they've had a sudden poor run of form so early in what certainly looked more than a promising season at the outset? there are certainly lessons to be learned and this was another rough reminder of life in the champonship.

i'm sure that one of the strikers will emerge fairly soon, and who knows, with ishmael miller expected back within weeks after christmas break it could be a high-scoring season yet?

in the meantime - and let's hope that luke moore finds his early season form again after a month of injuries, and that bednar, cox and wood find their form soon. at this rate, i think di matteo could even afford to give cox and wood more starts and see how they get on over a full 80-90 minutes of league football.