West Bromwich Albion 0 - Norwich City 2

Date: Saturday 7th December 2013 
Competition: Barclays Premier League
WBA:
4.1
(4-2-3-1) Myhill 5.4, Jones 7.0, McAuley 6.1, Lugano 4.1, Ridgewell 2.5 (Long, 46 4.7), Yacob 5.1, Mulumbu 6.2, Amalfitano 4.4 (Berahino, 46 5.4), Sessegnon 4.1, Brunt 4.8, Anichebe 4.2 (Vydra, 80 4.7)
Unused subs: Daniels, Popov, Morrison, Dawson
Manager: Steve Clarke 3.0
Norwich:
5.0
Referee: Mark Clattenburg (Tyne & Wear) 5.6
Attendance: 23,865   Home Fans 5.0   Away Fans 5.5

Summary:

Albion succumbed to another home defeat in a game that most supporters probably expected them to win. Youssouf Mulumbu returned to the starting lineup after his suspension on Wednesday, but Jonas Olsson missed out this time for the same reason and Diego Lugano stodd in for him. Victor Anichebe's goal against City may have been the factor that gave him a start up front, and Billy Jones returned from injury.

Albion were again poor in the first half and fell behind after just 13 minutes to a Gary Hooper strike that beat Boaz Myhill and went just inside the far post. Steve Clarke made a double substitution at half time and replaced Morgan Amalfitano and Liam Ridgewell with Shane Long and Saido Berahino, and Albion were much improved, creating chance after chance but failing to break down the stubborn Norwich defence and score. Shane Long, in particular, got little joy as he drifted out to the right. Matej Vydra replaced Anichebe with ten minutes left, but as Albion threw players forward in desperation they left themselves open at the back and a rare Norwich breakaway led to their second when Leroy Fer shot home.

Defeat leaves Albion slipping down the table on the back of just two points from fifteen since the win over Palace, and they now sit in fifteenth place.

Paul Gainham:

The only glimmer of good news that I can hope for following today?s shambles is that the fat lady is clearing her throat and Peace is already out there looking for Clarke?s replacement.

It?s not in the remotest bit funny anymore. Where do I start?

We play with 1 big, slow striker up front against a defence who have leaked goals for fun of late. Norwich play with 2 strikers ? they wanted something out the game

We play with no tempo and don?t press Norwich at all in the first half DESPITE Clarke saying on the radio that they had discussed about playing a pressing, high tempo game against Norwich. Well let me tell you Clarke, either the players were not listening, don?t really care what you say any more or you are being economical with the truth.

We go 1-0 down at home in the first half because we sit back and don?t press ? big surprise that.

Second half he does make changes at HT but what the hell was the formation, it was like ?let?s throw as many forward players on as we can and hope?

He plays Long out right who looks disinterested. Clarke, he is about the best centre forward we have, can?t you see that? Obviously not.

Our stats in calendar year 2013 are damning ? 7 wins from 34 games with something like 33 points.

Nope, its relegation for us this season. A decent squad of players for a club of our size and means being woefully mismanaged by a clueless coach.

Peace, it?s time to act.

Yammess:

What more can SC do? He made the changes, ones we wanted. We had the shots, we were UNABLE to get a goal, let alone the two needed.

Entirely the players' fault. You CANNOT blame the HC. Completely unable to hold our nerve and be clinical in front of goal. Sessegnon a waste of space.

Didcot Baggie:

Well the best thing about that game was my tray of chips at half-time. No wonder Mulumbu is looking for the exit. Barely anybody emerges with any credit - Billy Jones and Gareth McAuley tried but the rest were poor, some beyond the pale.

Lugano gives us hope that Uruguay will be beatable in England's World Cup group. I'm no big Jonas fan, but he is better than this guy. The rest had nightmares not least Sess and Long.

Clearly we don't know what our best line-up is or who to choose from the many forwards at our disposal. Playing 4-5-1 against Norwich? What was Clarke thinking?

The games against Cardiff and Hull are massive now. Even so I predict here and now that we will need to beat Stoke in the last game of the season to avoid relegation.

Mark Townsend:

What more could Clarke do? Oh, I don't know.... he could drop anyone who scores goals and hack away at his confidence. What the hell is the meaning of the following sentence from the Club's official team news "While the game comes too soon for Nicolas Anelka after only returning to training this week following a niggling groin problem."? Next week we'll get old man river plodding along? Is Clarke trying to get sacked?

We never had a chance in the Premier League until that lucky day we got a pacey striker, Odemwingie (yes he burnt his bridges after the club made two decisions to put his nose out of place and should have gone sooner) with a fast striker we stood a chance, we could keep the opponents' defenders defending..

We were so slow to get our shots off. Most of our shots on target were made when the penalty area was crowded - compare them to the only three shots Norwich had - they had the whole goal open to shoot at. Myhill was totally unprotected.

The starting 11 was a poor choice for this opposition, just what did Clarke think? Just about anybody connected with or supporting Albion would have said: "Steve, Norwich leak like a sieve. Let's attack at pace". Kramer Clarke "No ... that's just what they'll be expecting us to do ...".

The right players were on the pitch in the second half, but by then Norwich had their lead and a break to calm down and they weathered the ten minute storm.

At about 20 yards out, incisive passes were not made. Mulumbu had a couple of opportunities to pass out to the left and get someone in behind their defence, but decided to try and turn and go through the middle - he got all the passes through, but they were into a crowd and futile.

So many times - from our left - we had the ball on the ground and good possession only to lob the ball into the air for it to become a 50/50 chance - this has been going on for a few games now and it must be a tactic.

Should we have had a penalty? The defender raised his arms because he knew a shot was coming - he would claim the ball hit him, but there should be a consistent way of dealing with this. Maybe we could have had a consolation goal to make up for the lack of points. Let's not worry about that penalty decision, it wasn't like we lost by only one goal. Talking about bad luck with referees' decisions would deflect from the real problem. The referee cost us nothing, the three points were thrown away before kick off. Relegated sides have plenty of bad luck stories to look back on, but few smart decisions.

I liked Clarke, I really hoped he was learning, I enjoyed the way he countered every-expensive-thing Murinho could throw at us and even though we could all see the Chelsea pressure forcing our desperate tackles into our penalty area I thought "Clarke must learn from this not to go too deep and we do well when our forwards can harass the defence..". The penalty Yacob conceded came from us standing off and preparing to defend on eighteen yards while the ball was on the half-way line.

Well, Steve, you made a clarion cry to all those "beatable" sides to have a go at beating us. All you need do now is start Anullka and gift more points to our relegation competitors. I've got a suggestion: save Anullka for the FA Cup third round and then we can go out of that with a wimper.

Baggyjon:

I have not met Steve Clarke personally but he gives the impression of being a decent guy, diligent and thoughtful and therefore any criticisms are not of a personal nature.

However I have to say that Saturday was the first time in 53 years that i felt like going home at 2.30, after I heard the team selection. Against a side that had conceded 26 plus goals in their previous away games Clarke plays 1 up front in a home fixture that we need to win and leaves anyone with pace or goal scoring ability on the bench.

The first 20 minutes proved that Norwich were the worst Premier side since we beat the Wolves 5-1 and I am convinced that had he started with Long and Berahino we would have had the potential to take them to the cleaners.

As i say i quite like Clarke as an individual but I am fast approaching the fact that being a number 1 is a step too far. We have chopped and changed all season. Great servants to the club like Reid, Brunt and Morrison should now be moved gently aside.

If Clarke was fundamental in the acquisition of Anelka then that again questions his judgement, especially when that funding should have gone to strengthen the full back positions. Ridgwell is always a disaster waiting to happen.

I am afraid Mr Peace has some mighty decisions to make before Christmas. I hope they are the right ones.

Jenny Hall:

Couldn't bear to watch MOTD last night, but fortified by a good nights sleep & a gallon of strong coffee I did this morning. As the programme shows " highlights" I suppose you could say we were unlucky. Sadly, watching it yesterday just showed so many things that were just plain wrong.

I made up my mind, I dont like Clarke so OK I'm biased, but can someone please explain his logic in not playing our 2 best strikers against a team lacking in confidence and who have let in 18- yes thats right EIGHTEEN- in the last four games. Quite simply Ridgewell, never very good in my opinion, had an absolute mare. Trouble was he seemed to drag Brunt with him- was Brunty trying to help?- but at least Clarke saw this & took him off.

We did play the occasional pretty football but the decision making in the last third of the pitch was awful. Whoever had the ball seemed to take no notice of his fellow players nearby, & either went for goal- ne ver on- or passed back etc. We had 10 corners taken by Brunt- most were rubbish & overhit. Long didn't seem to have a clue so perhaps Clarke was right to drop him, but we now have an awful lot of strikers on the books who dont score.

Don't think we really missed Olsson - I'm not a fan of his either-but as others have said why not Dawson - is he better or worse than any of the others? Didn't think Billy had a bad game going forward, but he isn't a full back is he. Mulumbo tried hard & so did Yacob but it was very obvious that we could have played until Christmas & still not scored.

So - we are 2 points from the relegation zone, have a manager whose record speaks for itself & seems to have no idea of his best team- neither do I but then I'm not paid to.

Please Santa (or Mr Peace), for Christmas can I just have a new manager for my team, one who can let his players play to their strengths, have a bit of ambition, and provide a bit of entertainment instead of utter dross. I have been very good so I dont think that is too much to ask.

Pete Cottrell:

Does anyone in the whole footballing universe understand why the Albion's top two goalscorers were relegated to the bench against the worst defence in the Premiership to make way for a lumbering has-been with no brains and little skill? It was almost as though Clarke had decided that Norwich had had enough punishment for one week and that he felt sorry for them. Add to that the fact that we must have spent at least 15 of the first half minutes (one sixth of the whole game) passing to players in our own half, while the aforementioned "worst defence in the Premiership" sat back and watched in amazement at the skills of our back six passing to each other well away from any scary green and yellow shirts. When they got fed up with this it was usually to pass back to Myhill who had little option but to start the whole rigmarole again or to punt the ball upfield with a 50-50 chance of giving it back to the opposition. Astounding, indecisive tactics to which they were reduced owing t o having no one up front capable of making intelligent runs or otherwise troubling the Norwich defence.

By the time that he made the obvious half time substitutions (and delayed the third obvious substitution for another half hour or so), presumably after Clarke having received a call from Peace to say that he was preparing a letter of resignation for him to sign if things didn't pick up, Albion were so panicky that the many chances that they were able to create simply by taking the game to Norwich were utterly wasted. Sessegnon managed to waste the easiest chance of the match, something that he is in the habit of doing - remember his open goal against Villa?. Had he scored (seven minutes into the second half) it would probably have opened the flood-gates, so by my reckoning he alone has cost us 5 point in the last couple of weeks. He wasn't the only culprit, though - the wholeteam seemed to rush into making the wrong decision, snatching at shots, passing when they should be shooting or shooting when they should be passing. All reminiscent of headless chickens.

Difficult to know where to go from here, but this all looks like the clearest case of managerial incompetence since the days of Bryan Robson.

Marks:

  • Myhill 6. Did nothing wrong.
  • Ridgewell 3. A complete liability. We need a left-back as a priority in the transfer window.
  • Lugano 5. OK apart from hesitant defending contributing to both their goals.
  • McAuley 6. Good on the whole, but looked lost at times without his buddy Olsson.
  • Jones 6. Thank God for one decent full-back. Good game on the whole.
  • Brunt 6. Maybe should convert to full-back. Better than both Ridgewell and Popov.
  • Yacob 5. Disappointing after performance against Man City. Worst offender for always passing back.
  • Mulumbu 6. OK,but not at his best.
  • Sessegnon 4. Frustrating. Flashes of brilliance but poor execution.
  • Amalfitano 5. Did OK, but ran out of ideas (and people to pass to?)
  • Anichebe 3. Useless, brainless and should not have been playing in the first place.

Subs.

  • Berahino 5. Ran around but seemed to have no idea, and no instructions.
  • Long 6. Finishing poor, but provided much needed energy. Most affected by Panic Factor.
  • Vydra 5. Contributed little. should have been on earlier.

Manager. 2. Gutless. Poor team selection. Poor tactics. Poor coaching. Just poor.