The decision has been made to employ him as manager so he has to be given more time than this by the board. For that reason, I don't want him to go at this moment.
Whatever people's opinions on him, he has still not been able to use Joleon Lescott or Silvestre Varela AT ALL, he has only had a very small opportunity (a final 20 minutes) to use Sebastian Blanco and Georgios Samaras and he is also waiting for Jason Davidson and Christian Gamboa to get up to speed. He has had more time with Seb Pocognoli and Brown Ideye but both have also missed time with the team so far. Of our new signings, only really Craig Gardner and Andre Wisdom have been entirely available to use and neither of them are game changing players.
I'm not really defending the start to the season. 1 goal from open play scored by an Albion player in our first 5 games, that coming in the first game of that stretch, and conceding 7 in our first 4 in the league, as well as failing to win (discounting lottery penalties) in our first 5, very winnable games. All of this while playing increasingly flat and unimaginative football (just as warned by Preston and Wednesday fans).
You can't just sack him now though, not until he has had the chance to mould the full squad. Steve Madeley has made some good points in the aftermath of the game. People criticised the team selection on Saturday but it is hard to really pick a different team to the one he picked, other than bringing in a more defensive Yacob to add better balance to the midfield and maybe going 451 instead of 442 (but even then the midfield would have had little balance as the only real way of doing to would have been to drop one of Ideye or Berahino with no attacking wide men).
My money is on Irvine failing - he was the wrong choice and I said it at the time. But until he has had 4 or 5 games with a full squad then we can't pull the trigger. Not just yet. We are just going to have to grin and bear it until then.
