Hull City 2 - West Bromwich Albion 0

Summary:

Any optimism gained from last week's win over Swansea was lost again by defeat at Hull thanks to the recently departed Shane Long and another poor refereeing decision by Chris Foy. With Jonas Olsson's suspension adding to a growing list of unavailable players, Pepe Mel switched to a back four with Craig Dawson and Gareth McAuley in the centre and Thievy Bifouma partnering Victor Anichebe up front.

After half an hour, Long fell to the ground in front of Craig Dawson and Foy pointed to the spot. Although Ben Foster saved the spot kick by Nikica Jelavic, Liam Rosenior was on hand to head the ball in anyway. Seven minutes later, Long doubled Hull's lead with a neat finish from a knock down by fellow ex-Baggie Curtis Davies. Hands up those who just knew those two would cause problems...?

Despite the defeat, Albion ended the day in sixteenth place, three points above the relegation zone.

Mark Koppel:

Went to Hull fearing the worse that Shane Long would prove why we should not have let him go at such a crucial stage of the season.

So I hope Mr Peace you are really pleased with your decision to sell our most experienced striker to a relegation rival team.

Peace and Jenkins will go the West Brom AGM this Wednesday (in London??) and sign off more huge salaries for themselves.

Peace will give himself over ?1.2million and Mark Jenkins over ?600k, and for what?

For making the following carp decisions that will get us relegated:

1. Hiring Steve Clarke with no experience who he them had to sack.
2. Hiring a Solicitor with no experience who then bought a load of rubbish players, many of which played totally ineffectively today.
3. Hiring Pepe Mel with no experience and immediately undermining him by selling his most experienced striker only to be replaced by Chewy again with no experience.

We are not saying we should try and compete with the Top 6 but now it looks we cannot compete with the likes of Hull, Southampton, Norwich, Stoke, Crystal Palace etc.

On player ratings for today I would give Foster and Mulumbu 6.5, the rest 4 apart from Ridegwell and Reid who were a 2 out of 10.

West Brom Fans 10 out 10 for the support you gave Jeff Astle at 9 minutes and Pepe Mel throughout.

COUCHCRITIC:

I really cannot believe that all Albion season ticket holders aren't staging a sit-in for the removal of Mr Peace & his inept underlings as our hapless season goes from bad to worse. If it wasn't so sad it would be absolutely laughable over some of the decisions that have been made this year by those who seem hell bent on destroying what was achieved last season and the future of the club with it.

Peace & Co seem to be of the mindset that the almost certainty of relegation is nothing to do with them but the fault of others and their view that ?12 million 'invested' in the summer signings was more than adequate to preserve Premiership status when anyone with a footballing brain knows that this amount would not buy one half - decent player let alone strengthening the whole team!

Critics of Steve Clarke should remember what he achieved last season with such limited backing & how we beat Man Utd & were cheated of victory over Clelsea this seson without the tools to do so.

Our dire situation is nothing to do with who is Head Coach but who is the Chairman & Co.

Paul Gainham:

From Hope to Despair

That?s what it felt like as I trudged out of the KC yesterday. Maybe just maybe following the second half we had at Swansea we could continue that into the game here but as is often the case with our beloved team, it?s the hope that kills you. There was certainly more energy from the start in this game we were trying to push on Hull but our biggest Achilles heel today was our defence. Hull scored two, hit the post and missed a couple of sitters ? they deserved the win.

Of course most of the focus is on the penalty that wasn?t (and it wasn?t) but if you look at the build up to that, Jelavic bust a gut to outpace McCauley and keep the ball in, Dawson who was marking Long turned like the QE2 allowing Long enough time to get ahead of him and give that prat Foy enough of a reason to give the Penalty. That alas was symptomatic of the day, Hull wanted it more and we simply do NOT have sufficient quality when key players are out.

One thing that did leave me with a wry smile was the hundreds if not thousands of Baggies fans who clapped Long?s name before the game ? WHY? He like other players today is a mercenary who simply wanted more money and moved away from Albion as soon as the first decent offer came along ? why clap somebody like that ? I hope you now feel a little stupid for doing that.

Back to the game ? if you need 3 things to succeed as a club ? a game plan, quality players and commitment / passion to the cause, I would say we had 1 out of 3 yesterday. We simply do not have sufficient quality and our game plan was difficult to fathom.

Questions that Mel needs to answer

• Why play Bifouma from the start? He looks tricky but delivers nothing, he simply is NOT a footballer
• Why even bother with Sinclair on the bench? This man is as disinterested as you can get, drop him, send him back to City but get him away from our team
• I know you probably had no choice but Craig Dawson will never a PL player be ? every other manager has loaned him out to championship clubs, thats just about his level.
• Why play Ridgewell at all, lets play with 10 men.

The gaps between Dawson and McCauley yesterday were criminal and Long / Jelavic took full advantage of them. Those of you that question Olsson, please get it into your heads that when he plays, we are far more organised and that?s down to him. Without him we are a shambles.

So we are back to the place where we HAVE to rely on others to be worse than us. I really don?t have a good feeling about the Cardiff game next week, in Bellamy, Noone and Mutch they have players that will cause issues for our creaking defence, how sad that we have slumped so low that we lose easily to Hull and worry about Cardiff at home. That is surely the epitaph of this sorry, sorry season.

Player Marks

• Foster 7 Couple of good saves, saved the penalty really well, could do nothing with the rebound.
• Reid 2 Utterly useless
• Ridgewell 2 Utterly useless
• Dawson 2 Utterly useless
• McCauley 4 Without Olsson alongside, he is not the player we often see, caught out too many times today.
• Mulumbu 6 Tries but at times looked lost today
• Morrison 5 Ineffective
• Dorrans 5 Bright at times but mostly ineffective
• Bifouma 2 Said it before, a footballer he is not
• Sessegnon 5 Tried but ineffective
• Anichebe 5 Tried but ineffective

Subs

• Vydra 3 Headless chicken
• Berahino 3 No impact at all
• Sinclair 0 Did he actually touch the ball?

Coach 4 Still don?t know what is going on behind the scenes, bout todays game plan was confusing. Ultimately there is insufficient quality at his disposal and that will determine our fate this year.