West Bromwich Albion 1 - Manchester City 3

Brendan Clegg:

Another game where in parts we performed quite well and yet were undone by our own mistakes. I'm starting to sound like Irvine but I think there is fair case for it again.

It was certainly a bold, perhaps even naïve, team selection, but one that is probably our strongest side give or take the odd player - are we good enough to try that and go toe to toe with Man City with a 'more winnable' game against Stoke 48 hours later?

I could have understood Irvine not playing both wingers today and having a right go at Stoke but he went for it - perhaps he knows that he's one step away from the end of the plank?

And I thought we actually created more than city - certainly the stats back that up.

So despite playing some of our best stuff all season and looking like a team capable of winning games with threat and purpose at last, AI is under more pressure than ever and will likely go if we don't beat Stoke, if he even lasts tonight.

He's not totally blameless - yes we made errors but there were subtleties in our tactics that contributed to those errors:

Foster spilled the cross which was totally his fault but moments before we had Poc taking a corner for us and City exploited it to break away and nearly score right before the goal came. Is it wise to have your Left Back taking corners the furthest away from his natural position? If he delivers the quality of Leighton Baines maybe but surely with 2 wingers on the pitch one of them could have a go, be better quality and not be horrendously out of position.

For the other two goals McAuley and Lescott were both pressed without a midfielder or fullback giving them an easy ball so they attempted dangerous 30 yard longer passes into the centre of midfield inevitably for City to win, break and score which led to the penalty (that was harsh) and the 2nd goal. It happened a few times so you'd think AI or DK or KD might think to tell Gardner and Mulumbu to drop deep and give either centre back an easy ball or be goal side to defend breaks. It's these details that should separate them as coaches as being in the top 20 jobs in the country from others. They fell short. Again.

But equally as expensive were our mistakes in front of goal. Berahino missed 2 clear one-on-ones that you have to take at this level and most decent sides do. Gardner had the time to control the ball out unopposed from 8 yards and fire straight at Hart with the goal at his mercy - Silva made City's third look so much easier despite it being more difficult. Lescott and Varela also fluffed pretty good chances. All of these chances were better than anything City created - it's not a side we looked anything like being for the first 10 games of the season.

And these were not chances late in the game with City taking their feet off the gas, Gardner and Berahino missed theirs at critical times in the first half. You might fairly argue that City would still have pressed and gone up a gear/ scored more and you might be right - but the conditions would have helped us 2nd half and sides like City aren't used to conceding so many.

Don't even think I know what's for the best anymore - is anyone else we can actually get going to do a better job than AI? Might it then take them the same 10 games to pick the team we have now anyway and might it be too late by then.

I genuinely think the 11 that started today is better than 4 or 5 sides below us (and maybe 1 or 2 immediately above us) over 20 games - but you would expect them all to strengthen in the January window. Will we?

And another honest question - if you had 10 million to spend in this window who would you go for that you'd be confident of improving the starting 11 picked today? You can't buy a proven EPL striker for that in January so it's a gamble just like Ideye, and every other club is looking for the same.

• Foster - 5 Poor error and then kicking was awful but so were the conditions.
• Poc - 5 OK, not great. Keeping the ball is so important against the top sides and he was a bit careless at times.
• Lescott - 5 Quite a few errors, looked unlucky but City players seemed to get into his head a bit. Didn't look confident.
• McAuley - 5 Really struggled with Milner and Silva playing the space in front of him but kept going and gave his all.
• Wisdom - 7 Pick of the back 4 defensively and did his best to support attacks in his own usual style. Made a few errors but never hid and didn't suffer from being moved out of position when Gamboa came on.
• Varela - 6 Caused them problems, didn't have it all his own way but we look miles better with him in the team.
• Mozza - 5 Struggled sometimes but kept at it.
• Mulumbu - 5 As Mozza really, disappeared a few times.
• Gardner - 5 Missed our best chance of the game and was as-ever all effort and little substance.
• Sess - 7 Another decent game, probably our best player at the moment. End product can be questioned but if he had that every game he really wouldn't be playing for us.
• Berahino - 6 some great movement and we looked really creative with these 3 up top but his normally reliable finishing really let him down. Game might have been different.

• Gamboa - 6 Proved he can do a job at left back and his pace is an asset.
• Ideye - 6 Lucky goal might be what he needs. Ran about a lot but looked a bit lost in the wide right role when he came on.

Didcot Baggie:

Games like this won't decide if we stay up or not this season, but it was disappointing to see an inept performance and individual errors give Baggies fans absolutely no Christmas cheer at all. After a handling error from Foster and a reckless challenge from Lescott we were 2-0 down and facing a severe drubbing. City could have scored at will. But in an echo of the Chelsea away game they took the foot off the gas and settled for 3-0 - that, plus the snow, made the last 40 minutes or so no spectacle at all.

No point in reviewing performances - they were all poor, even stalwarts like Big Mac were guilty of wayward passing.

I really fear an upset against Gateshead - that is to say they beat us. Irvine way well then go, but I'm not sure if a miracle worker will appear to drag out more from this team than Father Ted does.

It's been said that 5 more wins and 5 more draws should see us safe. I'm not sure when those are going to come from at the moment. Hull on the 10th is a big game.

Kev Buckley:

Snow Joke

The Christmas cracker jokes were still very much in evidence as the cold leftover turkeys were brought out on Boxing Day, however the old adage that says that only good boys and girls will get presents was also exploded as a myth as the centre-back pairing which shipped three goals against QPR was left unchanged.

Presumably the AI behind the idea was that Lescott plus anyone would not be that troubled against a Man City side who were forced into playing James Milner as their "striker", and the manager will no doubt claim, as a positive, the fact that he was restricted to a single attempt in the first half, and an offisde one at that. Sadly by the time Milner did trouble Lescott and MacAuley, Albion were already three-nil down, making Milner a false number-nine, if ever there was one.

As I'd started to watch the as-live reply of the game, via the City TV coverage, I'd laughed out loud at their obvious lack of knowledge of the opposition, as they showed Irvine lining his side up with Morrison alongside Mulumbu in the midfield two, whilst labeling Gardener, who I initially thought JM must have been replacing in the screen, operating as our central attacking fulcrum, with Sessegnon banished out to the flanks. How could I have known that that joke, Irvine's joke, was to be on me.

As if to lend some weight to the need for an approach that has seen Albion squad after Albion squad rarely do little, for Albion manager after Albion manager, but keep it tight in the early stages, a corner that came way to early saw a blatant overcomittal of players forwards, resulting in us losing the opening goal. Without Brunt available on the field to dictate things from set-pieces, our dead-ball was delivered straight into Hart's hands and from there, it just took two passes and a bit of running off the ball to see City end up with six players swarming around our area and, after an unlucky deflection resulted in a looping ball that Foster had to stretch to reach, he obviously thought, that early in the game, that the ball would not yet be wet enough to need to have to treat with any caution, and so it was that this incredible combination of unfortunate events saw us fall behind. The one positive to be taken, I suppose, was that conceeding so early would not see us need to change the plan.

Lescott though, may have been the one player who wasn't aware of the continuation of the original plan, given that, on the quarter hour, from a free-kick out in our left halfway line area, the ball was passed short, inside, to him, and yet he seemed to be completely unaware that he was ever likely to recieve the ball from this attacking opportunity and only just about redeemed himself by recovering, when being put under pressure, by getting it back into the safety of being at our keeper's feet.

Lescott was to be surprised, in similar circumstances, early in the second half when Foster decided that rolling the ball out to him, presumably in an effort to draw City forwards, was the right option, and whilst, once again, it wasn't clear that Lescott was party to the options his team mates were taking, he managed to get away with being immediately closed down.

Shortly after that first scare, Morrison must have forgotten what he was supposed to be doing too, turned up on the edge of the City area, where, in the absence of an obvious sideways ball, he was forced into threading a forward pass through to Berahino, who, presumably, having not had any previous service like this, and seeing a ball not coming from Gardener, the designated playmaker, dragged his shot wide.

Our bad luck continued: on any other day of dropping deep, the miscontrol that saw Lescott have to stretch to make a challenge in our box would have probably have happened outside the area and merely resulted in a free kick and not the penalty from which City got to score their second.

Similarly, for Albion to be punished, from a misplaced pass within their own half, that found the midfield screen too far forwards to get back and make any intervention in the goal that killed the game off, can only be put down to the same desperation that had seen Morrsion, on 35 minutes or so, once again end up in a position where he had no option but to try and set up Berahino with another pass into the box behind the City defence. At first I thought it might just have been a replay of the earler chance but a second viewing showed that Berhanino dragged this one wide to a different spot.

Whilst there are managers for whom being three down at half-time would see a change of personnel, Albion, as we saw at Swansea a season or so ago, rarely employ the kind of manager who is likely to overreact so rashly, and in Alan Irvine, they have unearthed yet another calm, collected Scotsman, who will have looked long and hard at the way the three goals were conceded and concluded that, as they weren't a result of any flaws in the planning his starting XI had been working on implementing all week on the training ground, that starting XI should be given a bit more time to see the plans come to fruition.

But before anyone tries to label Irvine as a dour man, they need to consider his playful side as well, after all, what better way to try and introduce a bit of warmth and fun, and generate some cheer, into the festive season programme by waiting for the snow to start falling before sending out a Nigerian and a Costa-Rican to play in it. He even managed to arrange what would turn out to be a triple substitution in such a way that the stats will show Brunt and Varela on the pitch at the same time, between the 66th and 67th minute. Oh, Alan: you little tease!

Serioulsy though, Irvine's footballing nous will surely have been taking into account that Ideye would have scored goals in the snow whilst in Russia and would have been aware that Gamboa played in the snow at that infamous game when the USofA took home advantage to new heights and played a World Cup qualifier against Costa-Rica in one of Denver's mile high stadiums, though not Mile High itself, back in March 2013. It's perhaps a shame that Gamboa's 81 minutes in the snow, at international level that day, and all his other experience on the world stage, merely affords him the chance to play the odd bit part appearence at the Albion. Then again, at least Liverpool won't be able to complain that we haven't let their loanee get exposed to all aspects of the game here at home. Should guarantee us more loan players in the coming years: who needs contracted players anyway?

One final moment in keeping with the season was to arrive when Albion scored what might yet turn out to be a vital addition to the goals for column, come the final reckoning, with the City TV commentators running through an "Oh yes he has: oh no he hasn't" skit when trying to decide which pantomime dame had got the last touch on the ball before it crossed the line, with Hart, the goose who laid the golden egg coloured ball on a plate, Sagna, Morrison, Gamboa and Ideye all getting a namecheck.

Do enjoy the rest of the festive sesson everybody, even if Santa does turn out to be the Stoke fan his red and white suggests.