[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

Victory over Oxford last weekend, however hard-fought, kept Albion well in the running of a playoff race which increasingly looks like it might involve every team not threatened by relegation, and even one or two that are. But between our indifferent away record, our win-one-lose-one form and the sheer gulf between the sides on paper, Saturday's early visit to Elland Road feels like a Shakespearean date with destiny, highly liable to result in comedy or tragedy, if not both.

Table-topping Leeds, who've lost just one of their last eight league encounters with Albion, are presently on a five-game winning streak in addition to winning thirteen of their last fourteen home games with an aggregate score of 38-3. The Baggies, meanwhile, have enjoyed no success at Elland Road since January 2007, and to hang our hopes on the fact that said win occurred under the stewardship of Tony Mowbray would require clutching at more straws than a randy scarecrow.

If there are hopes to dangle at all, then they lie in the general unpredictability of things, and us having nothing much to lose. We've got to be someone else's banana skin every once in a while, and it'd be nice to think it might happen here. But realistically, anything - including a narrow margin of defeat - is a bonus in this hardest fixture of our run-in, and if the winter clouds that lour'd upon our house are made glorious summer by the sun of York, then the Ides of March may not look quite so rough after all.