Back from the Game: West Bromwich Albion

[Hoop Blah]

did we have tough players in 05/06????


I dont see BM thinking tough is the answer, determined for sure.

Sorry for replying to your post RL.

I think RL makes a very valid point. Football isn't all about pretty passing and the glamour players and we are a more determined and physical side now than under Rodgers. Some of that comes with experience, some with just having the right mentality.

As for the 05/06 side, we had Murty, Sidwell and Sonko who would all do that little bit extra to win the ball...or whatever was needed to get a result.

[PEARCEY]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp61ue3K_PM

Highlights.

Is this the BBC footage from last night?

There were more more highlights here than on the BBC programme but they missed all three of our great chances plus Feds tip over from a WBA header in the first half yet showed incidents that were far less crucial. Really poor.

[Ian Royal]

Way longer than the Beeb coverage last night... extended from their website possibly. Looked more like what's normally on the OS though.

Think Sig should have been off. Griffin was coming across, but wouldn't have got their soon enough to block / prevent a shot and I think he was leaving Miller free for a pass.

Griff pen - right decision
Mills handball pen - right decision, I think - hard to see.
McAnuff handball pen - right decision.

[Mad Dog's Ghost]

What you do see for every fixture on the BBC show though is 10 seconds of the players coming out the tunnell and everyone waving flags. Why bother with that?

[JC]

Way longer than the Beeb coverage last night... extended from their website possibly. Looked more like what's normally on the OS though.

Think Sig should have been off. Griffin was coming across, but wouldn't have got their soon enough to block / prevent a shot and I think he was leaving Miller free for a pass.

Griff pen - right decision
Mills handball pen - right decision, I think - hard to see.
McAnuff handball pen - right decision.

Highlights are on Player now and although slighltly better than the beeb it shows none of our good chances and seems to have a strong Albion slant.
Don't think it was a red for Siggy as there was definitely a covering player

[Ian Royal]

Way longer than the Beeb coverage last night... extended from their website possibly. Looked more like what's normally on the OS though.

Think Sig should have been off. Griffin was coming across, but wouldn't have got their soon enough to block / prevent a shot and I think he was leaving Miller free for a pass.

Griff pen - right decision
Mills handball pen - right decision, I think - hard to see.
McAnuff handball pen - right decision.

Highlights are on Player now and although slighltly better than the beeb it shows none of our good chances and seems to have a strong Albion slant.
Don't think it was a red for Siggy as there was definitely a covering player

Covering or not, it was a pretty clear goalscoring opportunity IMO.

I suspect the Youtube stuff may be the same as the Player stuff.

[Terminal Boardom]

I do think the change in our fortunes is partly also down to the fact that Mills, Griffin and Zurab are very tough players - not afraid to get stuck in - and we haven't had many "hard men" for quite some time. When you look back to players like Adie Williams, Martin Hicks, Steve Hetzke, Kevin Bremner etc - not out and out "thugs" like Billy Whitehurst and Terry Hurlock - but tough, don't want to be beaten, not afraid to put in a crunching tackle and not afraid to get hurt. We'll need very similar types of players to replace Zurab and Griffin if we're to compete like this next season imo.

Yep. I saw that in Griffin yesterday. He really got stuck in after a dodgy start and left his mark on his opponent. We were too soft in the early part of the season. Not now.

IIRC, I said something similar during the dark days of BR. We appear to be learning to win ugly.

[Man Friday]

The reason they celebrated is that they're a point closer to promotion.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO really?

You might be Mr Clever Bollox but a few others were questioning why they were celebrating a point.

[Man Friday]

Shouldn't have taken Long off. We were a poorer side after that. Churchie didn't win anything in the air.

Don't think you would be saying that had church scored his shocking miss

You're right, I wouldn't have. But as he didn't.....

[Maguire]

Those highlights were very WBA-centric weren't they?

Not a red card there at the end. Brilliantly cynical foul but there was another player back so a red would've been very harsh.

[bcubed]

Way longer than the Beeb coverage last night... extended from their website possibly. Looked more like what's normally on the OS though.

Think Sig should have been off. Griffin was coming across, but wouldn't have got their soon enough to block / prevent a shot and I think he was leaving Miller free for a pass.

Griff pen - right decision
Mills handball pen - right decision, I think - hard to see.
McAnuff handball pen - right decision.

I saw the Mills handball very clearly at the time and thought it was a pen
Can't tell anything different from these "highlights", (which as someone else said are very WBA centric)

[Mr. Reading]

Those Player highlights were dreadful - didn't mention Thomas was offside for the pen shout, didn't show a single one of our decent chances and seemed to love wba, absolutely awful.

[West_Reading]

Love them or hate them, Sky are the only ones with any idea on how to broadcast football.

[Dorset-Knob]

RL is quite right! teams need the ability to 'win ugly' otherwise it gives the opposition an immediate psycholgical advantage.

The best evidence for this is seeing Arsenal, a fine footballing side, with genuine world class players, being bullied out of games by journeyman footballers or cynical, physical sides.

In an ideal world it would be nice to contest games like Brazilian teams, but thats just unrealstic in a world where first is first and second is nowhere!

[10539.4 Miles Away]

Obviously not back from the game, but I had to add that Sig's foul at the end was cynical, unsportsman like and truly brilliant. We would have been livid if it had been against us, watching the highlights you can see he took a second to think about it and then chopped him down. Think Sig himself expected a red for it as well.

[Murts-is-Lej]

Those Player highlights were dreadful - didn't mention Thomas was offside for the pen shout, didn't show a single one of our decent chances and seemed to love wba, absolutely awful.

+1

I really wanted to see all those Kebe 1-on-1s and Church's 1st touch that was only just wide, etc. Shame they rely on the BBC to edit the highlights for them rather than doing a proper job themselves. What happeded to the 8/10 minute ones earlier in the season...?

[Hoop Blah]

That was a really enjoyable game of football and a throw back to how it used to be, loved every minute of it.

Although it was a great performance and I think everyone played their part we again showed how much we miss a centre forward who can be that little bit more clinical at the business end of things. Even our goal came from a couple of misses/decent saves by the keeper. Church missed another one-on-one just like he did in the cup too, and if we want to complete at the right end of the table next season this still needs addressing in the summer (I don't think we can count on Kebe reproducing the kind of goalscoring form he's been on for longer periods next season).

As a few others have said, we tired quite a bit in the second half, which although isn't surprising considering our recent run of games as the quality of opposition, but we didn't do a lot to counter it. Howard had an excellent first half, but again didn't really get into the game after the break and I though it was crying out for Karacan to add some extra legs.

Their goal, shocking with lack of foul throw decision, but just as bad was the lack of freekick for the climbing all over Gunnarsson when he challenged for the header from the corner. That was blatent and right in front of the ref too. However, I love McDermotts attitude to the decisions, and at the end of the say we didn't defend the corner anywhere near well enough. 3 on 1 at the back post for the header, and then if that wasn't bad enough they somehow still got to the knockdown without a Reading player challenging.

Despite those negatives, it was a great performance and the likes of Mills, Khizanishvili, Sigurdsson and Bertrand (he defended so much better) were outstanding.

[Royalwaster]

Obviously not back from the game, but I had to add that Sig's foul at the end was cynical, unsportsman like and truly brilliant. We would have been livid if it had been against us, watching the highlights you can see he took a second to think about it and then chopped him down. Think Sig himself expected a red for it as well.

Totally agree - I am sure the Sig thought he was off; looked surprised when it was just a yellow. There was sort of a covering player but the WBA player (Dorran?) was heading straight for the Fed and I think would have got a shot off before he reached him - on top of that it was a really chopping tackle, not even just a little trip. It was right through the legs ... nice one!

[westendgirl]

Way longer than the Beeb coverage last night... extended from their website possibly. Looked more like what's normally on the OS though.

Think Sig should have been off. Griffin was coming across, but wouldn't have got their soon enough to block / prevent a shot and I think he was leaving Miller free for a pass.

Griff pen - right decision
Mills handball pen - right decision, I think - hard to see.
McAnuff handball pen - right decision.

Highlights are on Player now and although slighltly better than the beeb it shows none of our good chances and seems to have a strong Albion slant.
Don't think it was a red for Siggy as there was definitely a covering player

The video highlights on the Beeb website are usually much more than they broadcast and more than is in the week highlights video. They are only available from 24 hours after the broadcast to the next set of games but are usually almost as good as Reading World.

They show our goal and Jobi's chance and 2 WBA chances in the first half and the offside penalty and the goal in the second, and a lot more talking heads than usual this week so the 3-5 minutes are less extra than usual

[Thomas L'Heureux]

Obviously not back from the game, but I had to add that Sig's foul at the end was cynical, unsportsman like and truly brilliant. We would have been livid if it had been against us, watching the highlights you can see he took a second to think about it and then chopped him down. Think Sig himself expected a red for it as well.

Totally agree - I am sure the Sig thought he was off; looked surprised when it was just a yellow. There was sort of a covering player but the WBA player (Dorran?) was heading straight for the Fed and I think would have got a shot off before he reached him - on top of that it was a really chopping tackle, not even just a little trip. It was right through the legs ... nice one!

Shades of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer's hacking down of Rob Lee many moons ago.

For all the millions and millions of goals Solskjaer scored, this was his crowning moment; running the length of the pitch with the only thing in his mind being to sythe down the player and to take his red like a man before walking down the tunnel to a standing ovation.