West Bromwich Albion 0 - Stoke City 0

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Ratings submitted so far: 15

Brendan Clegg:

Better, but not great. A pretty drab game played out by two pretty terrible teams in awful conditions.

The starting system and 11 were a bit more like it. Our best available 4 at the back, probably our best midfield with MJ nursing an injury and Dike replacing Heggebø who is been both utterly starved of service but also pretty crap for weeks.

I missed kickoff by a minute due to the stewards outside the Smethwick taking an age to frisk people but in the queues there were, sadly for me anyway, a few rounds of political chants. It’s a bizarre and perhaps almost sinister trend, especially given our club’s current fortunes. Surely we should be singing about the Albion? It’s worse than singing about Danielle bloody Lloyd or Victor Anichibe!

Anyway… the first 60 minutes or so were very samey. The conditions were tricky but we fought for everything and played the better stuff. There were plenty of them out there who gave it everything and we looked much more organised and happier in the 4-5-1.

But not a lot happened for a couple of reasons.

1. Jimoh-Aloba is not a left winger. He never offered out there at all so we had nothing there. He didn’t sprint, didn’t stay wide and so we constantly had no option there. And as a result, we were predictable and didn’t supply any service to Dike. (JA did look useful when he did get the ball but he saw nowhere near enough of it)
2. Price just isn’t a good enough footballer in the 10 role. He can run and he can occasionally shoot, but on the ball he’s got two left feet and he makes so many sloppy errors. His numbers are dreadful. It’s no wonder we look so toothless. He had 3 or 4 big chances to set up via a simple through ball that he cocked up. I’m not one of the booers for his silly little tantrum and he ran and chased everything, but he’s basically a player there who either scores or contributes very little. His pass success rate must be the worst in the team and many of them are not difficult.

So I’d say we were the better team. We limited Stoke to little. We knocked it about quite well up until the final third but we didn’t find a way to create a flow of crosses for Dike.

Apart from on deflected looping shot from Jimoh-Aloba I can’t recall either keeper needing to make a save.

We learned after the game that the triple-sub on 60 minutes was planned - always irks and worries me because what’s happening in the game should determine subs - and Wallace, Dike and JA made way for Johnston, Maja and Heggebø.

Personally I’d have kept JA on and put him in the 10 role for 15 minutes to see if he could get more ball and make things happen.

After the subs we were less cohesive… Maja had composure but he can’t run, Heggebø looked ineffective again and MJ, rumoured to be injured, had a proper stinker.

Being honest it felt like our sloppiness meant that Stoke would be more likely to nick one on the break and they had a couple of moments but we did enough, even though late subs for Gilchrist and Mepham weakened our defensive strength.

There was no grand finale. This was very much Mason-ball with better defensive discipline which is what we needed from day 1 of Ramsay. A rare clean sheet is something to build on but he has to find a way of getting some sort of threat into the team - we need clean sheets and goals to get out of this.

I’d bite your hand off now for a nil-nil at Blues on Tuesday.

• O’Leary - 6 Solid. Did the basics
• Gilchrist - 6 Did okay but sometimes on the ball it was painful
• Phillips - 7 Aggressive and up for it
• Mepham - 7 Concentrated and disciplined. Played like the player we thought we’d signed. Injury a big blow.
• Styles - 7 He kept the ball really well considering he had no option ahead of him.
• Mowatt - 7 looked after the ball for us and it’s a basic form of defence… if the other team don’t have the ball they can’t score
• Molumby - 7 Controlled aggression, battling and running
• Wallace - 6 Lacking the pace to get wide and create but a solid shift with plenty of fight. Tried to use his nous to create.
• Price - 5 See above comments. Pretty poor but couldn’t fault the effort or tracking back.
• JA - 5 Looks talented but was in the wrong place all the time and our balance suffered
• Dike - 5 Ran well, poor service, didn’t threaten or get hold of it.

• MJ - 4 kept giving it away
• Maja - 5 some decent touches but he’s washed! If you can’t run, stay in/as near to the box as possible
• Heggebø - 4 No impact
• Imray - 6 tried
• Taylor- 6 Kept it very simple and took no risks