West Bromwich Albion 2 Watford 1 (12/04/2025)
13/04/2025 08:34
1- Going to an away game on your own is Different.
A home game… fine. Kind of. You’d rather be with people but… the environment is familiar. The routine is familiar. And there’s people in the seats around you who you know. A home game in more than one sense.
But away is different. No established routines, no regular places to be. No travelling companion either, and the knowledge that – unless you’re prepared to risk imposing on your neighbour’s afternoon – you’ll be watching the game in isolation without the conversation that fills the gaps in play.
But West Brom is pretty much as easy as away trips get from where we are, and a familiar enough trek to be able to employ a modicum of learned wisdom. Don’t bother with JustPark for this one, there are a thousand pop-up car parks on the industrial estates surrounding the Hawthorns. The fanzone is a decent size but, perhaps reflective of what seems to be a fading art, the wall-to-wall catering vans of yore have dwindled to next to nothing and you’re left with Greggs, one beer van and one burger van (and as we confirmed here last season, if there’s no local custom for a van like that despite a relatively captive audience, steer well clear).
I opt for beer only whilst watching the steady build up to Sheffield United’s collapse at Plymouth, chapter one of an entertaining and much-to-be-enjoyed day at the bottom of the table. Despite the limited catering there’s still the big screen and a guy with a guitar, with supporters of both denominations standing around in the sun. Clubs that you don’t support are all much of a muchness of course, differentiated only by degrees of disdain for any club that isn’t your own but West Brom are less offensive than most. The home shirt is near ubiquitous here, the unseemly altitude of the country’s highest professional ground not compromising the number of short sleeves in evidence.
2- We never win at the Hawthorns. One only in the last thirty years, that a single-goal victory courtesy of two Heurelho Gomes penalty saves nine years ago this week. Otherwise the most we’ve had to celebrate are a couple of glorious draws (this one, this one) interspersed by any number of heavy defeats.
This, surely, plays into the mood. That and the knowledge that a side finding it terribly hard to score goals is now officially deprived for the season (and beyond?) of its two most potent attacking players. Many will have been put off by this entirely; as such there’s a distinctly non-random self-selecting nature to the Watford ensemble who rank higher than average on the “F*** it” scale and whose conduct is similarly indifferent to what’s happening on the pitch.
It’s brilliant. That I’m there on my own is completely irrelevant and forgotten, since the noise starts with kick-off and doesn’t abate for anything, least of all the fussy analytical detail of Albion scoring a goal. All power to those who consciously kept it going throughout; the one quieter spell came as the home side started the second half strongly, presumably following Words in the dressing room but our friends up the M1 reignited the atmosphere by considerately shipping a goal to Blackburn. Songs enjoying developments in Bedfordshire peppered the repertoire thenceforth, the rhythm section to which formed by the all-time classic “Elton John’s Taylor Made Army” and “All we care about…”. There’s a brief and divisive chorus of “we want Gino out” by those in favour of the next altruistic financier off the rank being handed the reins before the mood is read and more unifying tunes are back to the fore.
3- If you can’t score goals then the last thing you want to be doing is giving away soft ones at the other end. It was a goal that told a story to be repeated throughout and which defined Albion’s approach… Watford had lots of possession but were exposed quite quickly on losing it by a combination of the home side’s sharpness and our own failings. Such was the case here…. Dele-Bashiru was too easily muscled off the ball by Fellows, Karlan Grant had reacted to the turnover much more quickly than those watching him (Sissoko) and so received Fellows’ pull-back in far too much space, albeit he still had plenty to do.
It felt like the start of a long afternoon but the noise in the away end was going again before the celebrations had abated. On the pitch, Tom had spoken of the desire to unshackle in the games that remain; there was precious little evidence of that in the win over Hull, but “in football everything is complicated by the presence of the opposite team”. City didn’t accommodate that approach and we didn’t have the weapons to dictate it, but here with Albion as the home side in need of a win with some urgency there was more scope to exploit spaces. We may struggle to score, and we may have looked get-attable on the turnover, but if you don’t lose the ball you can concentrate on the former and not worry about the latter quite so much.
We bullied Albion for the rest of the half, the team – as ever on the best such occasions – in a symbiotic relationship with the crowed, fuelled by the support and restoking it in turn. Jeremy Ngakia sounded the clarion call, thundering down the right before cutting inside, as is increasingly his wont, and bravely committing opponents before laying off to Louza. The pass wasn’t perfect, Louza swung a boot at it but his shot was straight down the goalkeeper’s throat.
Ngakia has come an awfully long way since being all but written off earlier in the season when his own injury combined with the signing of Festy Ebosele, ostensibly to compete with Andrews at right back, seemed to question his future. Now he’s indisputably a solid first choice right back, capturing some of the indefatigable spirit of Lloyd Doyley… players with different strengths and weaknesses but similar in being utterly unphased by the latter. Inspiring and increasingly what my daughters would call “iconic”.
On the other flank, Caleb Wiley looks like providing some of what Kwadwo Baah was giving us on the other flank earlier in the campaign – a stock move supplying similar goals. Always an option down the left hand side he has neither the speed nor the power nor the fear factor of Baah, but he gets to the byline and puts balls across reliably, there’ll be more to come in the vein of Sissoko’s on Tuesday. He does get caught defensively but has clearly been told to push on – Albion’s opener saw TDB trying to cover for his wander upfield – but the possibility of his being retained beyond this season is ever more attractive.
4- Which doesn’t solve the problem that we’re finding goals very hard to come by. It’s easy to blame Vakoun Bayo, the decision to loan Rajović, Pozzo, Cleverley, Doumbia for this but the fundamental problem is that we haven’t found away to formulate a potent attack with the players that we have fit and available. Baah is the exception – a solid backline with Baah in front somewhere is always going to have a chance.
But in Baah’s absence, you’re very reliant on a central striking role that is very difficult to play in our formation. You need a very strong centre-forward to make it effective… Troy in his prime with his ability to hold the ball up, read the game, and/or turn on the ball and kick it very hard towards the goal would have been perfect.
We don’t have Troy. Bayo’s the easiest of targets; I don’t buy that he’s a dead loss but the diligent channel-running of his better days don’t make him suited to playing a lone role up front. No more so Mileta Rajović, more potent a weapon in the six yard box but so immobile and incapable of wielding his frame as a weapon that the high press we’ve struggled against all season would become even more effective and the ball doesn’t reach their six yard box often in consequence. Doumbia will be a fine, fine striker but isn’t there yet and was already attracting grumbles here for not being the finished article.
Albion had their own teenager up front in on-loan Spurs man Will Lankshear, making his second League start. He was involved in the game, got on the end of a few chances (albeit unsuccessfully), but spent much of it being booted up the arse by James Abankwah who exploited the high bar that Bobby Madley had established for penalising physical contact. This prevented Albion from building much, whilst Louza pulled the strings in his quarterback role and the home midfield – minus their suspended (!) hatchet man Jayson Molumby – were buffeted around by Sissoko and Kayembe. The latter came closest to scoring in the latter half hour of the first period which we dominated, crashing a shot past Griffiths and off the post, roared on by an away support that had managed to rattle both the home keeper into some anxious clearances, and Darnell son-of-Paul Furlong into a silly booking as the first half closed.
Early in the second half, the home side extended their lead.
5- Ultimately we played like what we are; a mid-table team missing some of its more fun players. West Brom also look like a mid-table team (albeit at least one of those tends to make the play-offs) but deserved to win on the basis of scoring twice to our once. A mid-table team is not what we aspire to be, perhaps, but it’s fine for the moment. There are worse things to be, after all (hellooooo Luton, but not just Luton – others have coped with No Longer Being a Premier League Club far worse than we have).
And there’s still plenty to enjoy in the second half, for all that the home side are doing a rather better job of breaking on us than they were in the first, and are certainly creating more than we are. A particular highlight is an insane block from Jeremy Ngakia whereby a sweeping Albion move seems to be heading to an inevitable conclusion before a clap of thunder and a leaping block at severe risk to personal health, as vital and breathtaking as any full-stretch save.
There was a decent one of those from Egil Selvik, denying Karlan Grant a second with a fine low stop to a punched near post shot to crown another solid performance. Sub Francisco Sierralta bullied the same player off the ball to noisy acclaim when the home side briefly appeared to be through on goal.
And at the other end we still had long spells of aggressive possession around the box and no, there wasn’t much of an end product but this wasn’t listless, don’t-really-what-to-do-here passing it around either. This was punchy and forceful and making the best of what we had, which is surely any manager’s job.
Culminated of course, however inconsequentially in the end, by a fine, fine goal crafted by Imran Louza who carved a beautiful through ball between two defenders to release our new goal machine Moussa Sissoko. Remember there was a time when he couldn’t shoot? No such issue here, a beautiful strike with Mamadou Doumbia following up and straight in the net to scoop up for the re-start.
There still time for a rousing chorus of “If Bayo scores we’re not the pitch” (he doesn’t, we’re not) and for that popular away trope of the gobby guy in the adjoining stand getting carried away and being led out by stewards to gleeful waves from the away end.
Nobody’s saying that we don’t aspire to be more than this. But at the same time… if you’re handwringing about losing Chakvetadze (almost certainly) and Louza (probably) and Abankwah (maybe) and Baah (another maybe), if you’re halfway excited by Vata, Keben, Massiah-Edwards, Doumbia, Wiley, Dwomoh, Nabizada…. if you enjoy shaking a fist with Mattie Pollock, sharing the zen of Egil Selvik, admire the relentlessness of Jeremy Ngakia or the longevity of a French international midfielder with 70 caps and sing songs about the size of Edo Kayembe’s head…
….then there’s plenty to enjoy now.
See you Friday.
Yooorns.
Selvik 4, *Ngakia 5*, Wiley 5, Pollock 3, Abankwah 4, Dele-Bashiru 3, Louza 4, Sissoko 4, Ince 3, Kayembe 4, Doumbia 3
Subs: Vata (for Ince, 63) 3, Sierralta (for Abankwah, 63) 3, Bayo (for Doumbia, 77) NA, Dwomoh (for Dele-Bashiru, 77) NA, Ramírez-Espain, Andrews, Morris, Akomeah, Bachmann
