Looking for positives, feeling a little better now, Eze had a poor game, so nobody will want to buy him
What the hell happened? It seems that I was lucky to miss viewing this match! Let’s see how we recover and set ourselves up for the Cardiff match.
Beaten by the better team. Not a disaster. Not hard to see why they are unbeaten and can see them doing the business this year - especially when Charlie gets going.
Reality check today....WBA are a good side, and will probably go up. We've been beaten by three teams this season, all of whom we'd expect to be in the play-off mix come May. If we continue to play the way we have (until today) then I reckon we'll be somewhere between 8th and 12th which is an improvement, especially considering how much the squad has changed. Cardiff up next, another test, hopefully Warburton can get them fired up against Colin.....
We were playing really well against Luton until Lumley threw the ball to one of theirs, we stuttered rest of that game, did much the same against a poor Millwall team who gave us 3 points via their Keeper, and never got going today against admittedly a much better team. Think we need to get back to that start against Luton somehow.
Totally agree i had WBA as automatic especially under Bilic. Keep beating the average teams in this league and we will be top 8, sadly we are not top notch which the game today clearly showed
Only 3 points off the top of the table How many on here honestly could say they expected that after 9 games? Today was always going to be tough but I am still feeling positive about the squad, manager and the general level of performances thus far
West Brom are a better side than us, but the disappointing thing about today was that we performed so much worse than we are capable of.
Didn't get to see much of the game - you say we peformed poorly, was that due to us not turning up or West Brom nullifying our play?
It's always hard to say definitively, isn't it, but for me it was more them nullifying our play and us not being able to match their level.
It looked a bit like men and boys. The seemed bigger and tougher than us, so I suppose that means they nullified our play. Having said that, there was no excuse for so many misplaced passes, which is our own failing.
Reflecting on the game after a few hours I'd say the baggies dud a number on us...the over loaded the mid field and basically took Eze and chair out of the game so it cut off our creativity....smart work by billic. We didn't help ourselves by misplacing so many passes and not keeping hold of the ball.....they kept Phillips &Diagana high up the pitch as an outlet thereby stopping manning and Kane getting as far forward as normal.... They should win the league by at least 10 points with the squad they have...... It's a measure of how far we've come that we're so disappointed by the performance but at least we only have to play them once more.... Keep the faith...
Too much doom and gloom on here. The truth is that we played as well as West Brom let us play and they are a good, good side. Sure, we had too many misplaced passes, lacked the control and the intensity of previous weeks and too often we didn't offer enough options to our man with the ball. But we limited their chances for nearly an hour and, with a bit of luck, might have held on. We did well to keep the game tight until well into the second half but they deserved to win, no question. I counted us having two shots on goal, both more of a threat to the crowd than to the back of the net. For their first goal, we allowed their man far too much room and time (see "lack of intensity", above) and, of course, Lumley looked like a startled deer in the headlights when the shot came. I thought their second came after what should have been a yellow card rather than a red (he wasn't really in control of the ball and had moved away from goal a bit). Plus, they took the resulting free kick quite centrally when, in fact, the foul appeared to be closer to the corner of the penalty area (directly below me in C block). I thought we had some good performances: Leistner was our MOTM and Manning and Chair looked mostly capable. Eze was decent, albeit not at his best. Lumley at least partly redeemed himself with a handful of good to very good saves late on when we were chasing the game and starting to leave gaps. Neither Hugill and, especially, Wells were terribly effective but West Brom were limiting the creative opportunities that came their way. We gave a lot of ball to Kane and he didn't do too much with it of any note; I'm not convinced that he's going to offer us enough going forward for the rest of the season. I would have liked to see Bright come off the bench earlier but I'm not sure his style really fits into a 3-5-2 and we seemed to persevere with that formation after he came on, although things were getting a bit frantic by then so it was difficult to draw too many conclusions. It's a reality check: on the basis of this game, we're not yet one of the top 6 teams in the division but we've come on a long, long way from last season and, with this squad and manager, we will improve. Let's keep the expectations in check. Onwards and upwards.
I thought taking off Eze was a mistake unless he had a knock. Our midfield was an open field after he went. Eze wasn't at his best creatively but he did a solid job in there. I was surprised he didn't replace Wells, who hadn't got into the game at all, and Chair earlier with BOS and Pugh.
Good post Rodney..... The only thing is that Barbet would have been off anyway with a yellow as he'd already been booked in first half.....
I saw on the Official he only has to miss 1 game and will be available for Blackburn, which surprised me because I thought you got a 3 game ban for a straight red? I never saw the Ref show a yellow before the Red, but you are right he was booked earlier, so suppose he was sent off for 2 yellows, and only the 1 game out?