West Brom feel confident ahead of meeting Villa
Aston Villa v West Brom, 4pm
30 September ~ Not so long ago West Bromwich Albion fans would go to Villa Park desperate for a win against the club many fans see as our true local rivals. Yet deep down we knew that it would end in tears. The painful truth was that Villa were a bigger, wealthier club who could afford better players. There are, however, signs that the balance of power in the West Midlands has shifted. Albion's victory at The Hawthorns in April 2011 ended 26 years without a win against the men from Witton. They followed that up six months later by ending a 30-year wait for a win at Villa Park.
A 0-0 draw in the return fixture means that we still wait to do the double, last achieved in the old Division Two in the 1973-74 season, although last season we at least had the satisfaction of finishing above Villa for the first time since 1979.
We go to Villa Park today knowing that Albion have a better squad, players in form and consequently nothing to fear. Under Steve Clarke the Baggies have started well, playing attractive football in the 4-2-3-1 formation best suited to our players. New signing have been seamlessly integrated, notably Argentinian midfielder Claudio Yacob and Chelsea loanee Romelu Lukaku, who has already scored twice.
Three successive home clean sheets show that Clarke is building on Roy Hodgson’s main legacy: defensive solidity and organisation. Villa also have a new manager but Paul Lambert has a rather more difficult job. For them the only positive thing about last season was that they weren’t relegated and Alex McLeish’s departure was unlamented. They won only five games at home which was, until recently, an intimidating place for visiting teams.
Albion chairman Jeremy Peace has had a lot of criticism and even abuse for his cautious financial approach but the long game he set out to play when Albion first reached the Premier League ten years ago – be prudent, accept relegation, invest the parachute money and come back stronger – has been thoroughly vindicated. He has also, with one exception, made shrewd managerial appointments, an area in which Villa owner Randy Lerner has shown spectacularly poor judgement.
It all points to an Albion win but pessimism is the default position of the dyed-in-the-wool Baggie and historically our record at Villa Park is not good. I will get on the number 11 bus to Witton as I do once a season, more in hope than expectation. I’ve been hurt too many times before. Peter Bateman
Ah, the old "balance of power shift" thing. You have a few half-decent results and this comes out. We get it all the time - the last time the balance of power shifted so much that Birmingham City are currently in the bottom half of the Championship. Form is temporary, as they say.
(Villa look like they're wearing the dodgy glow in the dark away kit in the picture)
Not sure you can compare Albion to the Blues. Did they ever finish above you? And are we likely to get into the financial trouble that they got into? Historically, Blues and Wolves have always been the boom and bust clubs, whilst Albion and Villa are more prudent and move up and down the tables gradually.
Did Bearlion read the last paragraph, I wonder?
I'd say that the last few times Albion have gone to Villa, it was with the feeling that we 'should' do something, that our players were at least as good as theirs etc etc. Until last season, though, we usually left disappointed. Even when we drew in 2005 and 2006 (I know we scored in the last minute in 2005), there was a sense of 'could have been better'.
Among various other feelings I have about Villa, I'm always wary of their capacity to deflate Albion's big expectations, and definitely wouldn't want to make a prediction of today's result...
Grahamjohn678:
Yes, Birmingham have finished above us. Without looking it up, I think it's happened on about a dozen occasions, mostly between 1967 and 1975 when we plummeted to Division 3 and back. Birmingham had one of their better spells around the same time and were in a higher division for most of the period.
I was referring to the Premier League specifically. I don't know whether the Blues ever finished above Villa in the Premier League.
It'd be nice for football fans - not just the Midlands contingent, but all of them - to actually wait and give a fairly large amount of time over to seeing how their club and team develop in the long run rather than make decisions after a few games. Right now, Albion and Villa are seen, respectively, as thus: a 'surprise package' that has 'established itself as a Premiership staple' and a team 'in transition', a 'work in progress', full of 'young, hungry players'. Most of these epithets coming from both pundits and, most annoyingly, from fans themselves.
These irritate me because they both seem to have made up their minds about how the future is already sewn up. We're an established Premiership club? Really? The shoots of a solid tenure seem to be there, but even Steve Clarke is more concerned about survival first, rather than consolidation. No doubt about it, three wins, two draws and a defeat from the first six league games is a good return, but not the conclusive basis to say we've arrived. Another few seasons in the Premiership (if we can manage that feat) would be more of an emphatic pointer, not the three successive seasons that continue now.
As for Villa, I can completely understand that they'd want to rid the bitter aftertaste of McLeish, but there seems to be - from what I read or hear (locally) - an overdone sense of satisfaction that now Lambert is here everything's going to be alright. It may well be that, I don't know - and that's the point. There seems to be a premature determination to call the season now. Albion are established. Villa won't go down.
How do you know? For all the bluster, there's a stunning lack of acceptance to knock off the long-term view and just make your minds up now. And if they go through a bad run? And if the invention and nous of Clarke, Lambert and their teams suddenly dry up and they're fighting for their lives, how will all those casual labels - 'established', 'surprise package', 'in transition', 'young and hungry' - look then?
These are promising times, or at least they look that way, but they could easily sour on the pitch, if not off it. Not trying to be a killjoy, but bright futures are being determined by a lot of people who aren't waiting around to see if they truly transpire, and that pisses me off quite bit.
The thing is Ian, our history shows that "a few more years" and we'll either be struggling to finish 17th or will be back in Mid table Championship. We, like a lot of teams that cannot afford to go 150 million in debt, Albion tend to rise and fall in 5-10 year blocks, so for me years 3 and 4 means I can relax. Years 5 and 6 start to worry and year 7 spend the winter on a beach in Australia!
Maybe so Jim, but I can't help feeling that, this season, there's an opportunity to either go on a completely new path, or, as you say, struggle again and end up in the Championship. Yes, I know we can't afford to go into debt (with respect, I'm bloody tired of hearing that drum being beaten, even if the truth of it has soaked into my pores), but what's happening now - from what I see and hear - is that we have a chance (if not a certainty) to establish ourselves in the Premiership without the burden of debt while strengthening ourselves in terms of playing staff and management, without looking at the bank manager with a sheepish, sweaty grin. To develop shrewdly and with intelligence, or, to use a slightly dumb analogy, do a football club version of The Good Life, where self-sufficiency and in-house development are not just the norm, but a continual benefit. Okay, Felicity Kendal's bum cheeks will be nowhere to be seen, but I think that's a burden I can bear.
In other words, to establish West Brom as a Premiership club with most of the positive qualities, but none (or at least, little) of the debt. And to do it with no sugar-daddy handouts. And to make sure your relaxation period lasts a damn sight longer than 4 years.
But it's a tentative process, and it's why the insistence that we're 'established' rankles with me. It's a long process and risks may ensue. It would be great, though, if we could pull it off.
'In other words, to establish West Brom as a Premiership club with most of the positive qualities, but none (or at least, little) of the debt. And to do it with no sugar-daddy handouts. And to make sure your relaxation period lasts a damn sight longer than 4 years.'
I'd like that too but who has really done it in the Premier League era? Bolton and Charlton are clubs often cited, but Bolton always carried a lot of debt (I hear) and are currently (I know it's very early days) looking less convincing in the Championship than Albion ever have in seasons following relegation.
As for Charlton, they ultimately seemed to decide that stability under Curbishley was boring and went on a weird odyssey through several managers and two divisions.
My worry is that, if Albion do have a couple more years of solid mid-table finishes, there'll be increasingly impatient talk of 'pushing on', which could lead to some unwise decisions and to the kind of fate that befell Charlton and others.
Pessimism's definitely the default mindset of Albion fans of my generation, hence my identification with the last lines of Pete's article.
Ok. With hindsight it is clear that the opening strategy for Baggies season is basically tire out the opposition by closing off all opportunities on our goal for 65 mins then hit him with a bunch of fresh attackers to go for win. In all previous games - including the Fulham defeat - we have finished stronger than opponents, especially against Everton which has been by far our best performance this season.
This was kiboshed against Villa by two first half injuries, meaning that only Lukaku could come on offensively. Gera looked knackered after he put Morrison through for Long's goal he was invisible. Would have been great to get Rosenberg or El Ghanaffy on.
That said the revelation this season for me apart from Yacob who is already a vital componenet, is the way that both Olsson and Morrison seemed to have hit a new level of play.
In Olsson's case his passing has improved beyond all recognition so that he can help turn defence into attack much better. Add that to his excellent timing of tackles and interceptions, and ability in the air and we have a great all-round player developing under our noses.
Morrison seems to be both fitter and more creative, able to link defence with attack behind the main striker and able to hold the ball much better in tight situations.
While the latter has confirmed his intentions with a new 4-year contract, I expect Olsson to be gone to a top European side by next summer if not in January.
Chelsea may also pull Lukaku back in January if Torres gets injured or loses form, so let's get our points in the bag before Xmas!
In the longer term who knows how we'll cope without Dan Ashworth?
@jameswba
I get what you're saying, but times have moved on drastically since Charlton's implosion and I suspect that the people in charge of Albion won't let matters self-destruct in much the way they or Bolton did. In fact, if you consider the sternly stringent mindset of the West Brom hierarchy, the history between Charlton's freefall and now has been filled with enough cautionary events, such as Leeds's financial fuck-up and Pompey's downfall, to give them the incentive to keep finances evenly managed. I get the feeling that even if a sort of Premiership ship-steadying was achieved, any clamour to get the chequebook out would be ignored. When we made our first forays into the top flight, everybody screamed to shell out substantial funds for reinforcements. No dice. The most money in recent times was given to Tony Mowbray, and fingers were duly burned by the experience.
I'm a natural pessimist, far more so when Albion are concerned, but forgive me if I suspect that if care and shrewdness are given their head, we could have a reasonable top flight future. Not just because of what's happening now, or what happened last season, or the season before, but because of what's happened in the seasons before them, when not only did we catch up with all the other clubs in having neat facilities and all the trappings a modern club is supposed to have, but all that financial control, allied with appointing people like Ashworth, who'd added a new dimension to the club via scouting and other areas of player acquisitions, has actually borne fruit that's benefitting us now.
Yeah, you could say parachute payments have helped, and I can't deny they've played a part, but they could've easily been pissed away wastefully and we could be moseying around the Championship right now, possibly worse off under less shrewd chairmanship. I suppose what I'm saying is that if we stick around the Premiership for a few more seasons, there'll have been - in my opinion - far too many examples of clubs fucking themselves up for Albion to be that complacent and drop the ball.
Peace and Co. have been cold, penny-pinching bastards in times past. They may have, in the long term, been so much more. Shall we see what happens?
@nick grant
I think it's a bit harsh to say that Lukaku came on offensively. I was at the game but I didn't see anything offensive about the way he came on. Did he have his shorts pulled down or something?
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