West Bromwich Albion 0 - Newcastle United 2

Date:	Sunday 9th November 2014
Competition:	Barclays Premier League
WBA: 4.0	Foster 6.1, Wisdom 3.8, Dawson 5.7, Lescott 6.6, Pocognoli 5.3 (Gamboa, 46 4.8), Brunt 4.9, Dorrans 4.4 (Samaras, 76 4.0), Mulumbu 4.4 (Sessegnon, 63 5.1), Morrison 4.3, Anichebe 5.8, Berahino 4.6 Unused subs: Myhill, McAuley, Baird, Yacob Manager: Alan Irvine 3.8
Newcastle: 6.4
Referee:	Craig Pawson (South Yorkshire) 5.6
Attendance:	26,476 Home Fans 4.4 Away Fans 6.9

Mark Koppel:

In this game West Brom were every bit as bad as they were against Everton. In fact we have only played one good 90 minutes this season, Spurs away, and with the more difficult games now to come.

So the Jury still remains well and truly out for Alan F Irvine, and nearly all the new players. One of those new players Brown 'No' Ideye, drove away from the ground today 45 minutes before kick off.

Please step forward the Genius who decided to spend £10m out of our miserly £14m transfer budget on one useless striker!

Of all the other new players I think only Lescott has really come off, and occasionally Craig Gardner.

Players ratings for today.

Foster - 6 One great save at 2 nil but too late by then. Not his fault we lost today.
Wisdom - 1 This guy is not a right back, let alone a left back. Has still failed to block any crosses all season and then wasted our best chance of the game with a comedy left foot shot. Hope he was only playing left back as Poco was injured.
Dawson - 6 Like Foster not really at fault for the goals. Also avoided punching the ball away in his penalty area this week for a change.
Lescott - 6 Solid but like Lescott, cannot be expected to clear every ball if you have weak full backs like we have.
Poco - 5 Strong on the slide tackle today but offered little going forward.
Dozza - 4 The problem with Dorrans is that he keeps been given chances, plays one good game, and then gradually fades in form each time. Today was another weak performance.
Mozza - 5 What has happened to his shooting boots? Played too deep again today and struggled to get up and down the pitch as much as he normally does.
Mulumbu - 5 Did quite good but gave away too many fouls and wasted a good shooting opportunity in the second half because he cannot shoot with power.
Brunt - 6 To be fair he tried harder than anyone today. Actually put in good crosses today but to no effect.
Berahino - 5 Newcastle had him in their pocket today. I think today showed that he is been hyped up a little too much at the moment. Still has a lot to learn.
Big Vic 6 - Our main threat today. Took the ball well with back to goal

Subs:

Sess - 3 Buzzed about a bit, quite ineffective.
The Greek Waiter 1 - Lounges about looking totally disinterested.
Gamboa 3 - For a so called speed merchant, rarely seems to take on and beat his Defender.

Steve Fereday:

Mark if that is true about Ideye then that is very worrying. I watched on the internet today in Cyprus and it was rubbish. In fact rubbish against a rubbish Newcastle side who really only started knocking it about after their gift 2nd goal.

Even if we had Van Persie and Drogba up front, with the midfield talent we had on show today, they would have had nothing to feed off. There is zero creativity. Dorrans who nearly left us in the summer is struggling, Jimmy blows hot and cold, mostly cold, Mulumbu is no longer the player he once was, and to be fair, he is not a go getter push forward guy anyway. Brunt plain and simple is not good enough and should not have the shirt let alone captain band.

We have Sess and Gardner and how Irvine can't see they should be automatic starts is beyond me.

[ Gardner was suspended today, otherwise I'm sure he'd have started - Ed ]

Brendan Clegg:

It's difficult to argue with any of the criticism flying about either for the players or Irvine. And in my opinion the performance was not hugely different to those against Palace or Leicester - both of which were poor and Leicester was probably the worst ever winning performance in the EPL from us I've ever seen, so bad I couldn't bring myself to write about it. The difference here is that an average Newcastle side can keep clean sheets and the other two could not.

Irvine was correct in his prediction that they do get a lot of men behind the ball but they also have pace and strength in all positions and we just don't have an answer to that at the moment.

And I'm starting to get worried because Palace and Newcastle at home are the easier games you have to get more out of to comfortably stay up. I still think it's going to be very tight this year unless we see quite an improvement and do not rely on clean sheets and nicking a goal. We need to be comfortably safe by April.

My biggest gripe is our lack of pace, width and today creativity. Defensively it is too easy to play against and we rely way to heavily on our fullbacks to do anything going wide.

I think you could make a fair argument that Irvine's call for Anichibe was understandable and even successful to an extent; I thought his performance was poor on quality but effective and he did make it stick, rolled people and showed better movement than he has, but all too frequently there was nobody near him - no midfield runners through the middle or wide men to lay it off to.

If you predict teams are going to pile men behind the ball you also need players who can go past people. Could we not have sacrificed Brunt or Dorrans to play Sess "wide"? (And that's Albion/Dorrans/Brunt wide which basically means drift inside at every opportunity).

I also seriously have to question the bench. If Mulumbu is starting do we really need Yacob and Baird there? Surely one of them would have done with either Blanco or Ideye or bloody-hell-even-a-kid-like-gamrston-or-nabi? McAuley was there to cover defence. If you are not going to have an adventurous bench in a home match against a side you predict will defend deeply in numbers, when will you?

Nobody has any idea is Ideye is good enough and without an opportunity of minutes in 5 or 6 games on the spin we will never know - but today was an example where Saido had a 'mare and he'd be the obviously alternative to be given 30 mins even if there was a chronic lack of service.

Look at Mulumbu - he isn't finshed. We know how good he is and how he's carried that midfield for a few years but with no reserve football the only way he will get back up to speed in fitness and sharpness terms is by playing competative games.

I hope Varela is fit after the break and is given plenty of minutes to have a go otherwise in January we're going to have to go out and try and buy 2 fit wingers and a striker.

I'll end with a small positive - on 3 or 4 occassions we played some really slick stuff to get out of trouble in the back 4 and through midfield. It was only the final 3rd when things broke down and even in this poor performance we did open them up twice in the last 10 minutes, unfortunately both chances fell to the left foot of our right-footed centre half who was playing and right-back and was then moved to left-back and he messed them both up with aplomb. Had it been a left footed winger or left bakc there we might have snatched a draw.

Foster - 7 Nothing he could do about the goals and made a couple of great saves.
Wisdom - 5 I'm not going to boo a kid playing horrendously out of position. Did his best and kept going, could we not have moved Brunt to left back at half time?
Lescott - 8 Our best performer by a million miles.
Dawson - 6 Did OK but caught napping for their 2nd goal, same happened first half and Wisdom came across to cover him.
Pocognoli - 6 Was doing OK but seems to get injured every game. It's a worry as Davidson looks a long way off a Premier League performer.
Mulumbu - 6 Effort was there but looks off the pace and allowed them to cross the ball far too easily for the 2nd. Needs game time.
Morrison - 6 Probably our best midfield performer in terms of energy and keeping the ball, but often too deep to support the front 2 (if he was supposed too, I'm not sure he was).
Brunt - 6 Hit a couple of decent passes and worked hard in patches but predictable and slow.
Dorrans - 5 Poor showing. Didn't give Wisdom and out-ball and again too often tried one-touch flicks rather than keeping the ball. 2 bad games on the spin.
Berahino - 5 One snap-shot in the first half aside they kept him quiet by closing all of the space for him to run into and didn't play off Anichebe as well as he might have.
Big Vic - 6 Gave us a target and battled with them but lacked support and quality.

Gamboa - 6 Showed how quick he is in patches but didn't do a lot.
Sess - 6 At least ran at them to create openings but it was over by the time he came on.
Samaras - 5 I'm not really sure what he offered other than dropping deep and playing sideways passes.