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Last Match Forum - 13/04 Sunderland (H) / Re: In Game Chat

« on: April 13, 2024, 03:53:25 PM »

Absolutely ridiculous stuff, Sunderland were absolutely zero threat now we've thrown away the game and put a lot more pressure on ourselves due to a completely ridiuclous 2 bookings.

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Last Match Forum - 13/04 Sunderland (H) / Re: In Game Chat

« on: April 13, 2024, 03:49:45 PM »

Draw would be a great result now, braindead couple of challenges.

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West Bromwich Albion FC / Re: Brandon Thomas-Asante

« on: April 13, 2024, 08:07:59 AM »

His finishing isn't great but its not like there's many centre forwards outscoring him in the league. And those that have have mostly cost big fees. For 300k he's been tremendous value, even if he's had to overplay in both seasons he's had here due to injuries. 

I suspect we will get interest from him from fellow championship clubs again this summer.

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West Bromwich Albion FC / Re: Play off Points Target

« on: April 10, 2024, 08:29:48 AM »

76 points will basically almost certainly be enough given how the games shake out, Norwich would have to get over 2 points per game for their remaining fixtures (so meaning they need to win 3 of their remaining 4) and one of the other 3 teams who can get over 76 points that would have to win every single game. Not technically impossible but incredibly unlikely.

I'd say its more likely it will be less than 76 points needed, but 76 points would be the "safe" total.

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West Bromwich Albion FC / Re: WBA FC Financial report 22/23 published

« on: April 04, 2024, 01:54:40 PM »

We already know for a fact that the club was trying to sell Pereira using dodgy means where some of the fee would be kept hidden, it wouldn't be a surprise if the club actually managed it, particularly given all the dodgy goings on that the owners were involved in with our finances.

Just on the face of it there's no way even the dumbest negotiators thought a guy with Pereira's record with us was only worth 17m. Based on Benrahma and Buendia he was worth far more than that on his championship record alone, let alone before getting 17 goals and assists in the premier.

Plus he went to Ah Hilal, who overpay for just about everyone. I mean look at the contracts they hand out, are they really going to quibble over a few million with us? Somehow they of all clubs get the best of us?

To my memory he demanded to leave and nobody else came in for him offering those types of wages. West Ham were interested, but the wages were like £45kpw under UK tax law or £100kpw tax free. MP said he'd only go to Saudi Arabia. So that was that. We were forced.

This has never made any sense, Al Hilal overpay for almost everyone. Why is Pereira the only exception? Why is it rich clubs need to pay such big transfer fees? On this logic teams would just say to players, we'll give you a few million on the signing bonus if you refuse to play.

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West Bromwich Albion FC / Re: Play off Points Target

« on: April 03, 2024, 09:46:49 AM »

no games are easy in this league, it's what makes the championship one of the most exciting leagues in the world in terms of results.

for us i thnk it's more about who we will face in the playoffs (trying not to get ahead of ourselves however).
Southampton for us are the team to avoid as we have 2 losses against them and the style of play seems to be one we can't deal with.

I don't think you can draw too many conclusions from the games in the season. We also took 4 points off both Leeds and Ipswich who've been better teams than Southampton this season. Southampton's defensive issues from the start of the season have come back ever since we played them.

Of course, we still have work to do ourselves to make the play offs and shouldn't get too ahead of ourselves.

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West Bromwich Albion FC / Re: Under 23's / Academy Thread

« on: April 02, 2024, 09:57:32 AM »

Mo Faal scored a last minute winner for Walsall yesterday bringing him up to 10 for the season. 10 non-penalty goals for a young centre forward in their first season in professional football is good going, hopefully we can get him on a longer contract with his due to expire at the end of the season. Clearly there's something there.

For context he's one of 7 players 21 or under to have scored at least 10 league goals so far this season in the entire league pyramid, so there's not tonnes of players out their doing it.

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General Football & Sports / Re: Anything England Football

« on: March 25, 2024, 09:42:02 PM »

This is by no means the best england side in my life time but it is relative to the other nations. Think back to that 2002 and 2006 world cup the golden generation we were still comfortably miles worse than the Italians, French, Germans, Brazilians and Argentines possibly even the Dutch.

Now by relative terms arguably besides the French we are the best side on paper. [I know we don't play on paper] a lot of the big hitters the Germans and the Italians don't have the persdonel they have had over past years and even the south American giants aren't all that. Don't think a good side has won the world cup since Spain 2010 the last few it's all been very marginal

Edit: to the point we are not the best ever but we are relatively and Southgate is blowing our chances at using our slight advantage. Next world cup has even more sides and more knock out so becomes even harder to win. He should have gone after he fluffed it v Croatia in world cup and if anybody had any doubts he should have gone after surrendering a 1-0 lead to Italy that was awful

This kind of proves my point about ignorance of the wider footballing world. That Croatia team had Brozovic - Modric - Rakitic in midfield, not one of England's midfielders in the squad was even close to their quality on the ball. You have that level of disparity in midfield you're going to be in trouble. But somehow, because its Croatia, and we're England, it was a crime we didn't beat the better team on paper.

The Italy game is a bit similar. It's not that we couldn't have won, or couldn't have done better but we lost on penalties to a team on a world record undefeated run with a midfield that was far superior to ours. You have the far superior midfield, you probably control the game. That's just the reality of football.

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General Football & Sports / Re: Anything England Football

« on: March 25, 2024, 09:14:12 PM »

The discourse about England is so heightened and usually pretty ignorant of the rest of the world. The England side is good, no doubt about it, top 10 in the world. But the spine is pretty weak, and teams with weak spines are never going to be favourites for tournaments. Whichever way you cut it, England don't have a top centre back to pair with Stones, and neither do England have even a good midfielder to go with Rice in midfield.

It's a flawed team that people have overrated due to a good few years between 2010-2018 when the squad was largely straight up bad. Because its no longer that, people jumped from "worst squad ever" in 2018 to thinking we were the best squad on the planet a couple of years later. Doesn't stack up. At the moment France have clearly the best squad in Europe, England's squad isn't really better than Portugal or Germany's. Then Italy, Netherlands, Belgium are all a bit behind but none a gaping chasm to us.

Southgate did a good job in 2018 and 2021. Average in 2022. Remains to be seen for the Euro's. Overall he'll go down as a good England manager with flawed in game management, albeit people overrating the sides he had. The 2018 side got revised from "worst England squad ever" at the start of the tournament to people blaming him for losing the world cup semi final in extra time, which I guess shows the ridiculousness of it all.

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West Bromwich Albion FC / Re: Tom Fellows

« on: March 22, 2024, 07:48:40 PM »

Fellows assisted England under 20s first 2 goals in a 5-1 win over Poland. Assisted our ex academy player Iroegbunam for the first.

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West Bromwich Albion FC / Re: Brandon Thomas-Asante

« on: March 13, 2024, 10:21:12 AM »

BTA is there or thereabouts an average championship striker (with the potential to get better), which makes him by far our best striker. He was in a bit of lull before his injury, as much I think due to over reliance on him this season thanks to injuries elsewhere. I find it hard to see how anyone could possibly have watched Wallace struggling up front in recent weeks and genuinely thought BTA wouldn't be an improvement.

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West Bromwich Albion FC / Re: Under 23's / Academy Thread

« on: March 12, 2024, 06:16:44 PM »

Difficult to tell at this point whether Villa even care about the signings or if its a "lovers scorned" situation from Hopcroft and Harrison. Their level of recruitment from our academy is unprecedented.

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West Bromwich Albion FC / Re: Carlos Corberan

« on: March 01, 2024, 10:41:14 PM »

Pipa clearly isn't rated, he's played 210 minutes for us all season despite being fit. He was a last minute cheap loan signing to add another body to the squad, most likely because we were out of options and had to rely on Corberan's contact book.

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West Bromwich Albion FC / Re: Last Six Games

« on: March 01, 2024, 10:30:44 PM »

Just need to keep our heads. 1.45 points a game gets us to 75 points, which you would think should be enough (although Hull and Norwich have been in annoyingly good form). To put into context, the last 11 games of last season when we didn't even do well and our season fizzled out we got 15 points.

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Albion Matchday Forum / Re: After Match Debate

« on: March 01, 2024, 10:02:45 PM »

Huge win. We were comfortably the better team till the silly penalty then understandably it was nervy. Before then Coventry were limited to pot shots from distance, although even after the penalty we didn't concede any major chances.

It'd be huge disappointing if we aren't able to close out a play off spot from this position we've got ourselves into.

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Albion Matchday Forum / Re: In Game Chat

« on: March 01, 2024, 08:26:15 PM »

Good start but we look fragile defensively. Far from convinced Pieters is a good match up against a huge physical player like Simms, he usually struggles against very physical problems. Bartley would probably cancel him out better.

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General Football & Sports / Re: OFFICIAL CHAMPIONSHIP THREAD

« on: February 27, 2024, 01:56:14 PM »

Burnley absolutely walked the Championship last year - you could argue they've been a bit naive with the way they have gone about things this year, but I would expect another strong performance from them.

I don't know if it follows  that easily, the only teams relegated with less than 28 points who've won automatic promotion the following season were us in 03/04, Sunderland 06/07, and Norwich 20/21.

It's not easy to shake off as bad a season as Burnley and Sheffield United are having. The squad they came down with was much better than their current one, and Kompany is no longer fresh and new also.

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General Football & Sports / Re: OFFICIAL LEAGUE 1 and LEAGUE 2 THREAD

« on: February 27, 2024, 12:09:13 PM »

Reading are having a near miraculous season to be avoiding the relegation zone with all their issues - 18 points deduction and still 3 points above! This after handicapping themselves by signing David Button as their keeper too.

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West Bromwich Albion FC / Re: Alex Palmer

« on: February 26, 2024, 06:34:44 PM »

Interesting comment. Which of the rest of our current first team squad would you also describe as "average"? And which would you describe as "above average" or "below average"? I'm interested in where you rate Palmer compared to the others.

I said he's average at pretty much everything, that makes him a decent keeper at this level. As players go. I'd prefer that to say, an excellent shot stopper who's awful with crosses (Sam Johnstone). Jed Wallace is probably the most similar outfield player. Ok at most things without really excelling at any aspect.

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Albion Matchday Forum / Re: Pre Match Chat

« on: February 26, 2024, 01:57:58 PM »

Huge game. We haven't really been good enough in these games against the teams we're competing with for the play offs in terms of getting over the lines with wins recently. A draw isn't a bad result in the grand scheme of things, although with Hull and Norwich in top form we'll need to be keeping up the regular wins. The upsides of a win would be massive though, and go a long way to a fatal blow to Coventry's hopes.

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General Football & Sports / Re: OFFICIAL PREMIER LEAGUE THREAD

« on: February 26, 2024, 01:53:12 PM »

Next seasons championship should be pretty open if we can stay competitive. Everton would just be another 100 point team if they came down thanks to points deductions.

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West Bromwich Albion FC / Re: Alex Palmer

« on: February 26, 2024, 01:50:01 PM »

He's average at pretty much every aspect, which makes him a decent championship keeper. I've seen absolutely zero evidence to suggest Griffiths is better in any aspect of the game, or would become better than Palmer with more gametime.

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Albion Matchday Forum / Re: After Match Debate

« on: February 24, 2024, 02:29:58 PM »

Decent performance against the divisions second most in form team - who also have probably the best 11 outside the relegated teams, have to be realistic. An away point here is decent stuff. We didn't give much up, and really with better finishing we could have got even more.

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Albion Matchday Forum / Re: In Game Chat

« on: February 24, 2024, 01:57:16 PM »

The last time Reach scored or assisted was May '22, really into the "definition of madness" bringing him on again and again. At best he puts in a 6/10 shift. Surely Swift or Weimann would be far superior options who actually have some track record of being able to score or assist goals for us.

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Albion Matchday Forum / Re: In Game Chat

« on: February 24, 2024, 01:52:30 PM »

We have a strong bench for this level, hopefully we can be proactive and make use of it.