Hodgson Past v Present

Terry Wills wasn’t too happy at the Hawthorns last Saturday.

To put it mildly, Albion’s performances this season, apart from the two opening matches, have been little short of dreadful.

And if the doubters needed any confirmation they only had to have watched and endured the opening 45 minutes against Fulham to sadly digest this truth. The Baggies started where they left off against Swansea. No flair, no creativity, body language suggesting they weren’t at the races and seemingly unable to raise a performance to keep the Hawthorns faithful awake. Believe me, it WAS that bad.

The second half did see an improvement, which wasn’t difficult, and if Peter Odemwingie, who had a shocking game, had scored from his one-on-one chance we could have stolen the points.

Fulham had totally dominated the opening half and it made me wonder just which team enjoyed home advantage. Luckily, for all their possession they were as toothless as Roy Hodgson’s misfiring outfit so a draw was probably a fair result.

Amazingly, this was Albion’s second clean sheet of the season, an almost unheard of feat, but apart from that….

Credit has to go to Gareth McCauley, who in his debut game well deserved the Man of the Match award and providing he, together with the ever-reliable Jonas Olsson, carry on in this vein there should be a vast improvement on the number of times Ben Foster has to fish the ball out of the back of the net.

But at the other end, unless the chances created are put away we ARE in trouble. Both Odemwingie and Shane Long were disappointing and should Roy Hodgson continue with a 4-4-2 formation (?) this misfiring duo have to show a 100% step up in form.

This week sees another long trip to face Sunderland, who although not doing enough to satisfy Steve Bruce will be a tough nut to crack. But in saying that the Stadium of Light has seen Albion pull off some memorable victories and should they return our faith the team can get a result most of the travelling faithful will be happy to see bearing in mind our current form.

Will we? Can we? Watch this space!!!