Andy Munro sees Blues draw with Albion.
Blues have only themselves to blame for dropping two home points with a host of chances that they failed to convert. In fairness to the Baggies, though, their keeper pulled off some good saves aided and abetted by a couple of miraculous goalline clearances.
Yet in general play, Blues too often got bogged down in the middle with Jhon Solis not his usual commanding self and the influential Paik seung-ho unfortunately going off injured. Despite his goal on Saturday, Jay Stansfield worked hard but in a laboured way and Marvin Ducksch was similarly struggling so it was left to the wide players to create the main dangers.
Both Carlos Vicente and Demarai Gray came on to show some classy touches but probably needed more time to really produce any tangible effect. August Priske was probably robbed of a goal that would have boosted his confidence by a dubious linesman’s flag (shame there was no VAR)!
However that’s all he did and there is also a concern that we have spent our biggest money, post-Jay Stansfield, on a little and large combo in Priske and Kyogko Furuhashi to so far not much effect, albeit it’s early days to judge the former.
A word about the defence with the classy Kai Wagner and the dominant Christoph Klarer the stars but one disappointment was the keeper’s distribution, which was a grade below what we came to expect from Ryan Allsop.
The other complaint was perhaps the time Blues took to build their attacks from the back and middle. Ibrahim Osman can be excluded in that criticism but too often by the time the ball was worked wide, the Baggies had plenty of time to double up on players.
Overall, it was a typical disappointing derby with the opposition going away far happier with a point than the Blues did.
