[boinging_along]

It's a lot of things really.
* Not great signings in the summer, but I'll admit to thinking they were definite improvements at the time.
* Losing Chadli, Phillips, Brunt and Morrison for so long.
* Still relying on Brunt and Morrison which shows a lack of decent purchases.
* We've just not put games to bed this season.   I think we're top of the league for teams dropping points from winning positions.  At least 13 points dropped - that's crazyily slack.

[Baggies]

Some really sensible, well thought out posts in here, especially fall out boys.

Ever since Adhworth left and Peace failed to replace him correctly, we have been treading water. Awful managerial appointments in Mel and Irvine, as well as half arsed football director appointments like Garlick, McDonagh and now Hammond meant we had to panic and bring in Pulis.

Pulis ground out survival for a few years against some really poorly run clubs in the lower half of the prem, but eventually he was allowed to build this awfuly unbalanced team.

Now he is gone, we are left with an owner who has no clue about football (something he seemed to half admit when he joined) and a chairman and other board members who's only credentials were working at other rubbish clubs.

[baggiejohn]

Slightly of topic, but I'm really interested in what people think was the correlation between what Dan Ashworth allegedly did in his position of Technical Director with WBA, & his role as Director of Elite Development at the FA.

[zippyandbungle]

How?
Unrealistic ambitions for the club brought about by punching far above our weight previously
Unrealistic ambitions for new signings due to previous players delivering far more than their price tag would have indicated

Failure to have a "pass on" management structure,regardless of them being "nice" Irvine and Mel should never have been managers in the prem and certainly not for us

Failure to recruit replacements /succession plan after
Phillips
Mulumbu
Odemwingie
Amalfitano
Sessegnon
Whilst I know there may be some divided opinion on the "individuals" the positions have never been replaced and this has been a massive failure

Even after all of the above , we are within 2/3 wins of mid table, almost every other teams fans in the bottom 8 will feel as concerned as ours but realistically we look better and are statistically playing better, we are not cut adrift and there are good players within our squad
Infighting, sarcastic clapping and booing shall not help, now would be a very good time for our fan base to get back to what we used to be , supportive and loyal...
Finally I think it's worth pointing out, I would not swap our squad with Burnley, Huddersfield, stoke, Bournemouth (maybe the strikers) or Swansea ....there is plenty of time.

[Black Country Pride]

How?
Unrealistic ambitions for the club brought about by punching far above our weight previously
Unrealistic ambitions for new signings due to previous players delivering far more than their price tag would have indicated

Failure to have a "pass on" management structure,regardless of them being "nice" Irvine and Mel should never have been managers in the prem and certainly not for us

Failure to recruit replacements /succession plan after
Phillips
Mulumbu
Odemwingie
Amalfitano
Sessegnon
Whilst I know there may be some divided opinion on the "individuals" the positions have never been replaced and this has been a massive failure

Even after all of the above , we are within 2/3 wins of mid table, almost every other teams fans in the bottom 8 will feel as concerned as ours but realistically we look better and are statistically playing better, we are not cut adrift and there are good players within our squad
Infighting, sarcastic clapping and booing shall not help, now would be a very good time for our fan base to get back to what we used to be , supportive and loyal...
Finally I think it's worth pointing out, I would not swap our squad with Burnley, Huddersfield, stoke, Bournemouth (maybe the strikers) or Swansea ....there is plenty of time.

Agree with everything but I hope the 'punching above our weight' line is referring to finances only. Burnley, Watford, Brighton, Palace, Bournemouth and Swansea are all far smaller clubs. Leicester, Stoke and Southampton are wealthier but historically have smaller fanbases and have had much less success.

[Adder]

Failure to plan properly for the break up of the close knit group that have served us well over 5 - 10 years

Brunt, Morrison Ollson, Foster, McCauley, Dawson, Yacob, We've gone from having all of those involved to this year just two in Foster and Dawson (until Brunt's return). When Villa were a shambles 2 years ago it emphasised just how stable we were with that core of players.

There has been complacency in not reinforcing the strike force. (Berahino fiasco dragged on too long) - we had half a season with just Rondon and HRK as strikers - what other prem team would leave themselves in that position ?

Morrison should have been moved on due to injury record and age...we have no other proper AM (not talking No 10s). The striker and AM gap should have been addressed, now it will be difficult to attract the quality we need.

[paulosull]

not investing in first team squad with quality players year in year out since we have been in prem, Championship players get found out eventually.

[superkev]

Not investing in a tannoy system as I cant hear what going on

[SmethDan]

Seeming spin the bottle transfer policy over the course of a number of seasons allied to general complacency.

Failure to invest in competition/support for the forward line.

Taking it for granted that our physios and sports science department could eek the last out of players with checkered injury records.

Tossing winnable fixtures down the pan by playing to extremely tight and negative percentages.

My wife's cooking's shocking, I don't know what that's got to do with the Albion but she could burn water and I don't see why the miserable cow should miss out  .

[garry]

I'm not going to be popular writing this but... it seems more than coincidence that while Jeremy Peace was chairman we enjoyed our best seasons in thirty years; now he's gone we seem on a rapid decline.

[Black Country Pride]

I'm not going to be popular writing this but... it seems more than coincidence that while Jeremy Peace was chairman we enjoyed our best seasons in thirty years; now he's gone we seem on a rapid decline.

Pretty sure the rot set in with him at the helm. Since the 2012-13 season we've been treading water and we were bloody lucky not to get relegated under Mel.

[mrmojorisin]

Simple reason - no long term strategic planning from the board and director of football.

[Jordie1471]

Pretty sure the rot set in with him at the helm. Since the 2012-13 season we've been treading water and we were bloody lucky not to get relegated under Mel.

The so called 'rot' started as soon as Dan Ashworth left.

He signed some absolute bargains and then soon as he left we ended up instead using our limited budget to go for cheap old and British.

Was never going to be sustainable

[Albionic]

I think a club can get away for so long with one or maybe even two of the following

complacency, an ageing squad, smattering of championship players, lack of leaders, negative football, poor injury luck, overly sympathetic decision making (contracts to mates and long service emplyees)

but combine the lot and you are knackered.

I haven't included under investment as I don't think the club are guilty of that, FFP, TP's wages, players transfer fees all point to a lot of cash being invested, however, a lot has been

POOR investments, ie Berahino debacle,  Poco / Gamboa / Macmanaman / McLean / Greg plus the contract extensions for Pulis / Morrison

Debatable investments  Barry / Nyom / R-Kanu / Olly / JRod / Academy

these are NOT counterbalanced by the few Good investments, (Evans / Hegazi / Gibbs)  beyond which I struggle frankly.

JP may have trod water, but he did so successfully (by his criteria) and the current incumbents have failed to deliver the same.

If I were Mr Lai, I would be wondering long and hard wether these are the people I trust to protect my investment over the short term yet alone to invest another trenche with. One thing it is indisputable JP was good at was recognising when to weild the axe and not prevaricating, (in fact some would argue he went early in Clarkeys case).
I hope JP still has the ear of Mr Lai and is urging him to clear the boardroom out post haste and get people in who can demonstrate a track record of good / swift dispassionate decision making.

Actions over the next 3 weeks are worth £200m plus to our owners, lets hope they "protect" the investment and not dither.

I'm not petrified of relegation per se, however relegation with this team (behind the scenes and on the pitch) is not a prospect to be relished.

[WBAinDEVON]

well for me the blame lies with the board, they should have seen that Pulis has a shelf life

[Backofthenet]

We have got in this position by our own doing. In that I mean the club - not us the supporters.
Poor investment had us thinking it was a good squad, the best for a long time argued by some. That has proved to be wrong. This squad is possibly one of the worst we have had for a number of years.
There is also the way the players are managed, used and motivated. These are clearly issues that we as a club have.
Poorly managed by the last few in post ( I exclude Roy from that bunch, but do include Pardew)
Wrongly used. I know we all have different ideas but in general our thoughts are more or less in harmony so if we can see it why can't someone who is a so called expert?
It is fairly obvious these players lack motivation. No-one really puts a complete shift in for the team, players don't seem to support each other and how many last ditch tackles do we see? WE give up the ghost a bit too easily for my liking. Carroll scored from nearly 180 degrees the other night without a defender anywhere near. We concede soft goals and no-one seems bothered. I remember Paul Scharner throwing himself in front of people when Roy was in charge.
We're where we are because we deserve to be. In the end the league table does not lie. We aren't to good to go down (which is often the cry). We aren't actually good enough to stay up. To go on the run we have winless is nothing short of a disgrace.
We are now targeting the Exeter game as the one to turn round our season.
Whilst a cup run would be exciting, it would be better from a position of safety because it could distract us from the real job and gloss over the many deficiencies we have.
We talk of getting 3 or 4 quality players in the transfer window. Lets be fair what 'quality' players would want to sign for us.
Other sides around us seem to be able to grind out results and keep going for the whole match whilst we drift off to sleep in the last minutes. God forbid we draw at Exeter and the replay goes into extra time. Poor chaps will be really tired then and probably have more to moan about how hard their lot in life is. 

[Astle1968]

I'll leave recruitment/Hammond/Lai/Williams/Peace out of this and focus just on what we have available to us as it stands

PULIS
I'll get this one out the way quickly as been discussed far to much elsewhere already but Pulis left a team that didn't know how to pass a ball, how to attack, how to score goals and by the end how to win a game. He bares a lot of the responsibility for where we are now and will take a portion of he blame if we do go down. Changing that from where we were to where we need to be is a 6-18 month project, which takes us on to Pardew

PARDEW
He can't come in an immediately get the team playing after some of the most negative and poor quality football. The upturn in the majority of the performances (from an aesthetic point of view) are about par with what I would expect a new manager to achieve. Ultimately despite some obvious flaws in the squad we know by and large with the quality of players available we are under performing in terms of results, both before and since his appointment. However the honeymoon period is over for him now. Getting us back to what many would consider an even keel (8th-14th playing half decent football) is as I've said a 6-18 month project but none of hat matters if we go down now. His only job for the next 5 months is to keep us up and on that front he is failing badly. 8 games is long enough in the modern climate to expect an upturn in results and despite being close in a few games the points return has been woeful considering who we have played. It's not to late and some of the recent games have offered various small signs of encouragement but with the gap opening up we are now past the stage of encouraging signs and improves performances. We need results and if we don't get them the buck stops with him. By and large his selections have been ok, apart from one glaring weakness which Pulis also shares some blame for....

....THE MIDFIELD
Beyond atrocious. Defensively we are ok. Nothing special but I don't think we are 19th because of defending. The midfield however is an absolute joke. Barry and Livermore together in any combination just doesn't work. Brunt simply has to play at the moment because he is the only person willing to play a forward pass. I commented a couple of weeks ago how the midfield had to take responsibility and look to play forward rather than taking the easy option 99% of the time and laying the ball back to the full backs or centre back. If we are going to play a defensively minded MF then Yacob simply has to play as he is our best defensive midfielder. It baffles me to see us play a MF with no creativity or attacking intent but still not including our best defensive player. Assuming we are playing 3 in he middle Yacob has to be one of these. After that we need someone who can create/score/carry us forward just anything remotely attacking. So one of Brunt/Chadli/Morrison needs to be in at all times. After that it's a straight choice between Krychowiak (my pick) Barry or Livermore (sorry but I just don't see what he offers at all defensively, attacking wise or just in general). Phillips then needs to play on the right and I would give Burke a decent run on the left. We need a spark and practically nobody looks like they are about to provide one. Given a run Burke may be able to. The same old players have been playing week in week out now for a year and have won 3 games in 10 months. Surely Burke and others deserve a chance in that scenario.

I do feel the squad is good enough to stay up but we have a problem with....

...CHAMPIONSHIP QUALITY PLAYERS
Pretty much every team from 8th down will have a few in their squad and by and large you can carry 1 or 2 if you have a couple of star players like a Zaha. However, for me at least, Livermore, Robson Kanu, McClean and Nyom are Championship quality at best. To many times in recent weeks we have had 3 or even all 4 of these on the pitch at the same time. It's far to many especially when some of he players who do have the quality (I'd say Rondon although others may disagree) are so badly out of form. A firing Evans, Chadli, Burke, Rondon, Phillips and we may be able to get away with a couple of them in the team but with nobody playing particularly well we can't afford to carry 3 or 4 players who offer practically nothing week in week out.

POSITIVES
We are not a million miles away. I don't believe you are unlucky to win/lose a game unless a poor reffing decision costs you as this is out of your control but it's fair to say on another day we could have easily taken 6 points from Stoke and Everton which changes everything. Nobody is really blowing us away and we have been in pretty much every game since Pardew arrived to some degree. We have shown against Liverpool, Arsenal and to an extent United we can be resilient and against Everton and Stoke there is some attacking ability still there. We don't have a single player really bang in form at the moment but again if one of 2 (Phillips and Rondon?) can hit the heights we know they can then hat alone should be enough to give us a chance. Rondon is a major concern, I know he splits opinions and I personally am a fan but it's clear he is shot at the moment. No striker sign will ever be clinical compared to the top players but he needs to be taking more chances tan he currently is. An on par Rondon is enough to keep us up, but the version we have at the moment will see us relegated unless he improves or we bring someone else in.

JANUARY
I'd sell Evans for whatever we can get and throw the lot at an attacking midfielder and striker. I'd look at Dembele from Celtic ideally throwing McClean in a swap deal say £12m/£15m + McClean. Alternatively I would have approached Mitrovic if Pulis was still here. If he fits in to the plan Pardew has remains to be seen but he is definitely available (possibly not a to a rival) and improves what we have. To replace Evans I'd take someone on loan (Ranocchia springs to mind) and spend whatever we have left on either a creative number 10 or a goalscoring winger/wide attacker. Easier said than done but that has to be the aim.

Far from over and I don't think it will take a huge shift to get us safe, but whatever we need has to happen very shortly as if the gap gets to 6+ points we are really in huge trouble.

[Backofthenet]

Agree with almost everything you say Astle - bit concerned about Mitrovic though - he looks a bit like Rondon in disguise and one of those is enough !
However I completely agree with everything else you've put - Well said

[Astle1968]

Agree with almost everything you say Astle - bit concerned about Mitrovic though - he looks a bit like Rondon in disguise and one of those is enough !
However I completely agree with everything else you've put - Well said

Mitrovic is far from ideal and I think he would fit a Pulis team better but realistically we are not going to be able to find many players who can score 7-10 goals in the remaining games, will cost less than £20m, would want to join us ahead of other potentially interested clubs and is most importantly is available.

There's definitely players out there who can improve us but I have very little faith our current set up will find them although this is the first window post Pulis so perhaps they deserve the chance to prove me wrong there. I'd take Danny Ings on loan but with his injury record it would still need to be Ings plus 1 more for me. Ings on his own is to much of a gamble.

[alex1]

I think the reason we are where we are is a mixture of Pulis and poor scouting.

The team has been taught to play one way for 3 years. It was based on going for a 0-0 draw and nicking a 1-0 if possible. The trouble was when we went behind there was no Plan B. The current squad is the end product of Pulis. The irony is he brought in skilful players like Chadli, Barry, Gibbs and (on paper) Krychiawok, but they were never allowed to play their natural game. Pulis priority was always the defence and holding
(i.e. defensive) midfielders. I give him credit for bringing in Jay Rod, but generally the priority for Pulis was getting the defensive players in to play his system.

I also think we have been too restricted to the British market when looking at new players. We always seem to be behind clubs like Stoke, Southampton West Ham when it comes to spotting talent. Players like Arnautovic, Shikiri, van Aanholt, van Dijk. Anybody who had serious knowledgable scouts looking at the German, Dutch etc. leagues would have been able to spot these players. Even now, looking at the Bundesliga every week I could pick out players who would be an obvious improvement to our squad (and when I get Dutch tv again, I could add to those). Since Ashworth, very little quality has come from the European market, so something needs to be done there.

This all points back to the management of the club. Have we got the right people there? There is very little communication from anyone above team manager level, so you can only judge by their actions. I think Pardew needs to be given a proper chance. He has not yet brought in any of his own players. I like his instinct to get us playing on the front foot again and get us attacking as a team again. With a couple of additions in the strikers department, it will hopefully click, and the team will build on the momentum from a few victories. 

 

[Backofthenet]

The other issue with signing players is that when we are linked with a player - genuinely or not, there are always the same 'suspects' linked as well. Stoke, West Ham, Palace. That doesn't inspire me but we also seem to lose out to those anyway. Sometimes it's a good thing I'll admit but there must be reasons for it. I accept the Pulis effect will have had a lot to do with it but footballers these days are the modern day mercenary and they care little about who they play for so I believe we have a tendency to dither about too much. The present time is ideal to get some players bedded in with the cup this week but my guess is that we'll still be having the same conversations towards the end of the month.

[mulliganstired]

I agree completely with Astle's post.  Livermore can be emergency CB if Evans goes, Pardew needs to call the players in, tell them who is the starting 11 if fit for the last 16 games, go 3 at the back and tell them we need to aim to score at least 2 every game, shoot on sight policy, not headless hoofing, but forward minded players like Ollie, Phillips, McLean, any new signings, even Leko, to put defence duties bottom of the list, just go for it and if we're going down at least go down fighting in the proper Baggies way.

[matt_wba912]

How have we found ourselves in this position - simple by replacing Dan Ashworth with a series of people who are not qualified / competent at the job assigned to them.  Since he left our transfer policy and managerial appointments have simply not been good enough

[P Anderson]

How have we found ourselves in this position - simple by replacing Dan Ashworth with a series of people who are not qualified / competent at the job assigned to them.  Since he left our transfer policy and managerial appointments have simply not been good enough

Agree 100% with this, we didn’t even attempt to replace him, we just employed Mr Garlic, an internal appointment, who was clearly out of his depth.

To be honest we should re-appointment Dan Ashworth as he has had a tough year working with England and he may be open to working with a club who appreciates  his hard work.

We can only dream.

[VVVAlbion]

From the moment Jeremy Peace realised we had probably peaked and wanted out we have made a series of bad decisions.