West Bromwich Albion are heading for the Coca-Cola Championship after two seasons in the top flight, todays defeat in Newcastle combined with Portsmouth’s win at home to Sunderland means that Albion need a miracle to stay up.
A toothless performance at St James Park today highlighted the reasons why we are going down this season, a lack of quality up front and nervous individual mistakes have cost us dearly.
Today we were as gutless as we have been all season, one shot on target and three sloppy goals against as we limp towards the end of the season.
Newcastle who decided against playing Michael Owen and without Alan Shearer attacked Albion from the off.
Albion boss went with the poor finishing of Diomansy Kamara and veteran Kevin Campbell up front neither looked like testing Shay Given in the Newcastle goal, Bryan Robson replacing both at half-time.
Newcastle were two-nil up at half-time thanks to goals from Nolberto Solano and a penalty from Shola Ameobi five minutes before the break.
Ameobi finished Albion off in injury time and it now looks like we will be visiting Southend etc, next season in the Championship.
Robson decided to make all three of his changes at half-time with Kanu, Nathan Ellington and Junichi Inamoto replacing Campbell, Kamara and Steve Watson. Why Robson decided to stick with the same strikers that couldn’t hit a barn door against Bolton earlier last week is anyones guess, why he talks Ellington up and then leaves him on the bench is beyond me.
Robson pinned his hopes on Ellington in January when we let Rob Earnshaw leave the club and truth be told he is a big waste of £3 million and how he scored 24 goals last season I would never know.
From our strikers through to our defence you will be hard pushed to find Premiership quality. Ellington is not good enough, our midfield lacks creativity and our defence doesn’t have the experience to deal with playing in the Premiership.
Robson take note, this is YOUR side, you have had the money and the time to bring in your own players and the only one that has come of his Curtis Davies. How many of your signings can you honestly say have improved our squad?
Ellington is not good enough, poor in front of goal and he can’t be bothered half the time he plays. Darren Carter has hardly featured, we give one of our rivals £1.5 million for him and he is not good enough, slow and never looks fit. Richard Chaplow looks good but not enough experience to help us now, cracking signing for another £1.5 million. Diomansy Kamara is poor, he can run rings around anyone but has no end product. Jan Kozak and Williams Martinez have been poor and a waste of money, neither one of them good enough. Nigel Quashie has shown he could be a valuable asset, will he want to jump ship like he has done before when we are relegated?
All of these players have been signed by Robson and none of them other than Davies and Watson have improved what we already have.
Both Robson and Jeremy Peace, who according to reports was on holiday today and not at St James Park, need to step up and take action this summer.
It will be a crime if Robson is in charge come the start of the season and I will be making my feelings known at the West Ham game.
His decisions in the transfer market and his tactical knowledge have lacked this season, we are going down and his toothless ‘attacking’ formations have been one of the factors in our impending relegation. We are limping our way to the Championship and with Robson as boss we will have no chance of returning.
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