[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

Dear oh dear. If we thought those problems with form we had before lockdown were nothing that a cheeky three-month rest wouldn't fix, cruel reality has disobliged us. The last time we scored a league goal, flattening the curve was the name of Beefy's workout routine, and social distancing was what you did when someone farted in the half-time pie queue. And it doesn't really help that Bilic's public response to the ongoing slump is a set of inane soundbites like "embrace the pressure!" (I mean, with all due respect, Slav, if I can't even embrace my own relatives then there's no chance I'm going to start cuddling up to something that never wears a facemask and tends to give me serious breathing difficulty.) It's painfully obvious that we're struggling to break disciplined teams down with our passing, that poor decision and execution lets us down when we do get into good positions, leading to a paucity of goalscoring chances, and the strikers we've got aren't putting away the handful of chances they get. This problem requires some fresh ideas, and it needs them soon.

The first chance comes on Wednesday Wednesday, when Albion travel up to Sheffield for a floodlit encounter at Hillsborough. Our last visit - and how many centuries ago does it feel like now? - was an incredibly fortunate 2-2 draw in October 2018, when Harvey Barnes dug us almost single-handedly out of a hole in the last ten minutes. The Owls come into this on the back of a victory against Bristol City at the weekend, and will therefore have the momentum. And anything less than a win will leave us liable to being replaced in the top two by Brentford before our next game. Plenty of pressure to be embraced there, then.

Whatever the outcome of tomorrow night and the subsequent Saturday fixtures, we'll host Hull on Sunday with the Tigers locked in a relegation battle; exactly the kind of game that's usually a banana skin for Albion. Nevertheless, winless since early January, I'm not sure there can be any excuses if we lose to Hull right now. I warned during lockdown that if the season was resumed, then promotion wouldn't be a shoo-in, and it's proving that way. Time to start fighting for points and earning the prize we want.