[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

On Friday night we venture up to Teesside for a fixture few will relish. For the first time since he was given his marching orders from the Hawthorns, Tony Pulis will go head to head with Albion, and I suspect the way we struggled against his sides in the past will be nothing to the fight we'll be facing now he's got a point to prove.

In spite of last year's playoff heartbreak, Boro have started the season well, and are perhaps a bit more swashbuckling in attack than many would give them credit for. Whether they'll persist in that approach in what's effectively an early promotion six-pointer remains to be seen, but one way or another this will be a big test for Big Dave, who's pitting a few months of tactical experience against the decades to the name of Tony Pulis.

It was around the same time of year in our last promotion season that we came up against Boro under Gareth Southgate in 2009, and inflicted a crushing 5-1 defeat at the Riverside from which their campaign never recovered and ours never looked back. I doubt it'll be such plain sailing this time round, but a draw would be a good return from what amounts to a serious bogey fixture.