Table-topping Baggies welcome the Pilgrims

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·20 September 2024

Table-topping Baggies welcome the Pilgrims

West Bromwich Albion v Plymouth Argyle; The Hawthorns, Saturday 21st September 2024, 3pm

When Albion lost 4-1 in a pre-season friendly at St Andrew’s a week before the season started, I can’t imagine that any Baggies fan thought that they would be sitting proudly at the top of the table five games into the campaign. It’s been a phenomenal start for Carlos Corberán’s team with a creditable 0-0 draw with Leeds United the only blot on their league campaign so far.

What is also unusual is that the Spaniard has named the same starting eleven in each of the five league games so far – so unusual, in fact, that no Albion manager has done so for sixty years since Jimmy Hagan used the same eleven for the first nine games of the 1964/65 campaign. Furlong and Molumby are potential doubts for Saturday’s visit of Plymouth Argyle so the record might not be extended, but such consistency of selection is particularly rare these days with much larger playing squads.

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The Pilgrims will be looking to end an unbeaten start for their opponents for the second week in succession having beaten Sunderland last weekend thereby giving the Baggies the opportunity to claim top spot on Sunday which they duly did with an excellent 3-0 win at Portsmouth.

Argyle’s victory was something of a surprise given that it was their first league victory of the season. The club appointed Wayne Rooney as their new manager in the summer – undoubtedly a big name but one that has so far failed to impress as a coach. His first match in charge was an incredibly disappointing 4-0 defeat at Hillsborough – Sheffield Wednesday have not won a league game since – but they have only lost one of the subsequent four Championship games, 1-0 at home to Stoke City, picking up draws against Hull City and QPR before their win over Sunderland.

While Plymouth will obviously be boosted by their victory last weekend, Albion will be full of confidence following their excellent start to the campaign. None of their performances have been perfect by any means, but Corberán has got the team purring playing the best football we have seen from an Albion team since the first half of the 2019/20 season when Matheus Pereira was pulling the strings. This season’s team may not have a mercurial talent to match the Brazilian, but they have a group of excellent players who are being coached superbly and the signs are there that they could match the achievements of Bilić’s team and win automatic promotion back to the Premier League.

The superb result at Portsmouth will have further increased expectations and no Albion fan will be truly happy with anything other than a victory on Saturday.

History

The Baggies are in an eight match unbeaten run against the Pilgrims, six of which they have won. Plymouth’s last win over Albion was the surprise 5-2 victory at the Hawthorns in April 1993 when Ossie Ardiles’ team’s march to promotion was briefly disturbed by what was their biggest home defeat of the season.

More than 40 players have signed for both clubs over the years but the only current members of the two squads to appear for both is Baggies stopper, Alex Palmer, who had a successful loan spell at Home Park in the 2019/20 season helping the Pilgrims to promotion from League Two, and Plymouth’s Zimbabwean defender, Brendan Galloway, who made five appearances for Albion on loan from Everton in the 2016/17 campaign.

In recent years, Baggies academy product, Finn Azaz, spent two seasons on loan at Argyle but never made a senior appearance for Albion while Reuben Reid, who spent a season at the Hawthorns in 2009/10, started his career at Home Park and returned there in 2013 for a second spell. David Button, James Chester and Scott Sinclair also played for both clubs.

Going a little further back in history, Darren Purse, who was a member of Bryan Robson’s Great Escape squad in 2004/05, moved to Home Park late in his career while Kwame Ampadu had a loan spell in Devon from Arsenal in 1990 before he moved to the Hawthorns.

There have been a few strikers who have turned out for both clubs including the two unrelated Evanses, Mickey and Stewart, but perhaps the most successful was a real Albion legend of the 1920s, Jimmy Cookson. He scored 103 league goals for the Baggies in just 122 games before moving to Argyle in 1933 where he maintained a great scoring record notching 37 in 46 league games for the Pilgrims.

As well as Alex Palmer and David Button, there have been a few more ‘keepers to sign for both clubs including the late, great Alan Miller, Chis Adamson, Paul Barron and Mel Rees. Gordon Nisbet, who started his career as a goalkeeper but converted to a full back, played for the Baggies in the seventies spent seven seasons at Home Park in the eighties – he was named in Plymouth’s best ever eleven when the club celebrated 100 years as a professional club in 2004.