20-10-2023, 11:10
The defeat at St Andrews was an unfortunate bump in the road just at the point when Albion looked to have turned a corner. It may be for the best that we've had a fortnight to recover; it may be even better that we're back on home soil for the coming week's matches, and resuming the campaign with our first game against Plymouth since February 2010. In addition to losing all five of their away matches so far this season, Argyle have lost their last five on the trot versus the Baggies, and you have to go back over thirty years - to the infamous 5-2 trouncing during that calamitous 1993 run-in that plunged Ossie's Albion down into the play-offs we were ultimately destined to win - to find the last time the men in green claimed three points from this fixture. So, a ripe time for them to don their bucket hats and bleached t-shirts and bring 1993 roaring back into fashion? Well, Albion negotiated the Sheffield Wednesday banana skin at the beginning of the month, and as long as we can keep a lid on Morgan Whittaker, the tireless winger who provides a large part of the visitors' goal threat, it should be no different here.
On Tuesday night, QPR then visit on a losing streak of three matches and a winless streak of six that's sunk them into the relegation zone. League positions notwithstanding, it's an historically tricky fixture that brings goals galore: you have to go back to Easter 2000 to find a goalless draw between the sides, and encounters at the Hawthorns since then have seen Albion average 2.8 goals to QPR's 1.7. Rangers shipped four at home to Blackburn before the international break, so it could well be more of the same in mid-week, but as always, no one ever made their fortune backing Albion to do things the easy way.
If the playoff race is our target, then we have to hunt for six points in the coming days; but allowing for injuries, defensive frailties and sheer sod's law, four is a tally we could settle for.
"I would rather spend a holiday in Tuscany than in the Black Country, but if I were compelled to choose between living in West Bromwich or Florence, I should make straight for West Bromwich." - J.B. Priestley