West Brom’s season took another damaging turn on Friday night, as they suffered a 2-1 defeat away at Huddersfield Town.
Although Dara O’Shea’s strike cancelled out Chris Willock’s opener, a late Emile Smith Rowe goal secured a big three points for the hosts in their battle against relegation, confirmed Leeds’ promotion to the Premier League, and took automatic promotion out of West Brom’s hands with just one game remaining in the Baggies season.
That result means that Slaven Bilic’s side have won just three of the eight games they have played since the season resumed, and reacting after the match, plenty of Baggies fans were understandably unimpressed.
One player who came in for particular criticism was Romaine Sawyers. The midfielder, who played the full 90 minutes at the John Smith’s Stadium, struggled to impose himself on the game, and was dispossessed five times across the course of the match, more than any of teammates (as per WhoScored).
Is criticism of Romaine Sawyers justified?YesNo |
With plenty of Albion fans voicing their frustration at Sawyers’ performance both during and after the game on Twitter, we’ve taken a look here, at what some of them had to say.
Romaine sawyers is reason West Brom have bottled promotion
— Ellis Holmes (@edtxasbo) July 17, 2020
Rather have boiler man than sawyers
— Ben Smith (@BenSmithyyy) July 17, 2020
Someone tell me how Jake Livermore gets subbed over Romaine sawyers please. Still can't get my head around it 🤦♂️
— Jack 🇺🇸 (@ftblJackv2) July 17, 2020
Why is Sawyers immune from being subbed off? Offers absolutely nothing apart from jogging and sideways passes.
— Callum (@CallumWBA_) July 17, 2020
The biggest mistake slaven made was taking off Livermore instead of Sawyers. Sawyers was awful yesterday, misplacing passes, losing the ball from being casual and lacking urgency. Sawyers NEEDS to come off when we are chasing games, he slows everything down #wba
— Adam George (@AdamGeorge_) July 18, 2020
Anyone kept count of how many times Sawyers has given the ball away? He’s wracking them up.
Terrible play.#WBA
— Bomber’s Boots (@BombersBoots) July 17, 2020