Baggies bottom out

Tuesday, 11/01/2011

by Dave Wedgbury, Shoot's West Brom blogger

West Bromwich Albion, our beloved Baggies, appear to be in free fall at the moment, with a record that now sadly boasts ten losses in the last 13 games.

This is undoubtedly relegation form and leaves Albion sitting bottom of the current form table.

Saturday saw Albion take their league form into the FA Cup with a 1-0 defeat at Championship team Reading. Although Albion started brightly and the returning Ishmael Miller should have scored at least one of the early chances that he was presented with, alas Miller proved what most Albion fans know, that he usually requires three of four chances to return one goal.

The Premier League does not offer such luxuries and chances need to be taken, it proved Saturday that even lower level teams do not give too many chances away and Albion never really recovered to create such chances again.

Will the cup exit prove to be a blessing in disguise? I would gladly sacrifice a cup win for a couple of wins in the league at this perilous time. Will the manager be able to lift the confidence of the players for the visit of the impressive Blackpool next Saturday?

Even the returning Jonas Olsson, a player that I have eagerly awaited to return to the fold, failed to make any impression. Although I guess he did make an impression, he managed to get himself sent-off within 15 minutes of his introduction at the start of the second-half, not exactly what us Baggies were anticipating and now an automatic ban of one game. It was pretty obvious that his lack of fitness contributed to the sending off, his inability to keep up with play led to his bookings and sending-off.
 
Where do we go from here? A return to early season form is a necessity now we are so close to the relegation zone, in fact if results go against us next weekend, we could find ourselves languishing at the bottom of the division. This would mean a couple of teams achieving unexpected results and us losing, but football does produce these results now and again.
 
The fans are still awaiting any transfer activity, and if the chairman is true to form we may have to wait until the last ten minutes of the month before we sign any new players. This is much, much too late and we must move into the transfer-loan market immediately, surely negotiations should have been going on over previous weeks to identify targets and make the necessary phone calls to advance the talks.
 
John Carew (pictured) is the most widely rumoured player to be on the fringe of signing, I’d gladly welcome big John to The Hawthorns and hopefully he can reproduce his early Villa form for the Blue and White Stripes.
 
Saturday did see the replacing of Scott Carson with Boaz Myhill, he was one of the few players to impress and should have done enough to earn himself a start on Saturday, many Albion fans will welcome his presence in goal and hopefully he can impose himself upon the crosses and corners that the opposition are so often bombarding into our gaol area knowing that we do not usually have the players to deal with such a threat.
 
Roll on Saturday and every that can be crossed will be crossed in order to help the team to a much-needed three points, let’s all forget the last few months and get behind the team to urge them onto a victory to send Blackpool back to the coast empty-handed.


 
      

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