Challenge for Corberán as stuttering Baggies head to Blackburn

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·22 Oktober 2024

Challenge for Corberán as stuttering Baggies head to Blackburn

Blackburn Rovers v West Bromwich Albion; Ewood Park, Wednesday 23rd October 2024, 8pm

While the current challenge for Corberán may not be as large as the one he faced when he took charge at the Hawthorns two years ago, expectation levels mean that his ability to navigate a difficult period as Albion boss has never been more in focus. Travelling to the home of a team defending a 100% record on their own patch is probably not the game he would have wanted at this stage.

Blackburn may sit at the top of the home form table, but the Baggies sit top of the table for away form this season with ten points from their five games on the road with a division’s best eleven goals scored. However, they have only one point from their last two away games having conceded a stoppage-time equaliser at Oxford on Saturday.

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The match at the Kassam Stadium was very close to being exactly what Corberán needed. Albion were nowhere near their best, but they were in control for much of the game and, while some decent opportunities to put the result beyond doubt went begging, the hosts never looked like troubling Alex Palmer until, of course, they did.

There has been much debate amongst commentators and on social media about who is more to blame for the late concession, the players or the head coach. For the incident itself, the players must take the majority of the responsibility – it was a fairly simple long throw routine that no Albion player managed to get a head on, although it would be churlish to blame Mikey Johnston for being beaten to the first one given his stature, but should he have been the man in that position? It was Oxford’s only long throw of the game, so it is difficult for outsiders to know whether the players were prepared for them, and if they followed instructions. There may be more scope for criticism of the apparent approach to sit on the one goal lead in the closing stages, but then there has been criticism in the past for doing the exact opposite! The head coach’s post-match comments certainly suggested that he was frustrated with his players.

I still have every faith in Corberán and his team, but a number of players are not performing at their best. The two best performers at Oxford were Maja and Grant, and the Spaniard was reportedly forced to withdraw both due to “fatigue”. Maja definitely needs to be protected, particularly in a three game week, but I was surprised that Grant needed to come off although he is working hard these days. I thought Diangana also had a reasonable game but Fellows was below par and even Mowatt was guilty of giving the ball away a little more often than usual – WhoScored.com gave him his lowest rating since the match at Stoke in August.

Although the substitutes did not perform particularly well individually, I did feel that Albion improved in the last twenty minutes having been under significant pressure in the period immediately after half time. There were some poor decisions made in the final third when in good positions, but it was the visitors that were more on the front foot until, of course, those final moments.

Having said that, it wasn’t a defeat and Albion travel to Blackburn still in the top six and only three points off top spot. A failure to win at Ewood Park would result in the longest winless run of Corberán’s tenure, but given Rovers’ home record, a point would not, in this instance, be a bad result.

John Eustace is enjoying a good start to the season having endured a tricky first few months at Ewood Park. He took over at Blackburn in February replacing Jon Dahl Tomasson who had left by mutual consent and took over as the new Sweden national coach a few weeks later. Rovers were in 17th place when Eustace took over and, after they failed to win for the first ten games of his tenure, they dropped to 19th and were just three points above the bottom three at the end of March. A shock 5-1 win away to Sunderland eased the pressure but they still needed a 2-0 win away to champions, Leicester City, on the final day to secure their place in the Championship.

Among thirteen new signings for Rovers over the summer were Andi Weimann who was on loan at Albion last season, former Coventry City defender Kyle McFadzean and former Norwich City forward, Todd Cantwell, who returned to England having spent last season with Rangers. Their top scorer this season is Japanese striker, Yuki Ohashi, who has moved outside his native country for the first time and has found the net five times already, although not since he scored twice in the 3-0 win over Bristol City in mid-September. Perhaps the most significant exit was that of last season’s Championship top scorer, Sammie Szmodics, who moved to Ipswich Town in mid-August.

Rovers’ 4-2 win over Derby County on the opening day was the first under Eustace at Ewood Park, but his team have followed that up with another four home wins in the league and they haven’t conceded a goal at home since August. Their only blemish at home came in the EFL Cup when they were beaten 2-1 by League One Blackpool. Their home league form sees them in sixth spot, behind Albion on goal difference, having picked up just three points on their travels.

So a challenging fixture for the Baggies when they are facing their own challenges, perhaps not a crisis of confidence but there will certainly be concerns within the camp at the recent run of results. Football is often a game of fine margins and, perhaps, those have fallen the wrong way for the Baggies in the past few weeks. For now, they need to put the effort in and work extra hard to ensure they are on the right side of those margins going forward.

History

Albion’s 4-1 win over Rovers at the Hawthorns in January is their only victory in the last five encounters, although they have lost only three of the last ten with two wins at Ewood Park, in August 2021 and December 2011, both by two goals to one. Wednesday’s fixture will be the 136th in major competitions since the first meeting in the FA Cup in February 1885.

The only former Baggie in the current Rovers squad is Andi Weimann who moved to Ewood Park in the summer having been released by Bristol City – he has already endeared himself to the Blackburn fans by scoring against Burnley in August. None of the current Albion squad has ever played for Blackburn.

There have been plenty of players to have turned out for both clubs over the years – goalkeepers include the late great Alan Miller, albeit he made only one appearance for Rovers after moving from the Hawthorns to Ewood Park in February 2000, Paul Bradshaw who started his career at Rovers before joining Wolves, and Mark Grew who had a loan spell at Blackburn from Port Vale in 1990. Speaking of Port Vale, one of the players who scored against them on that famous day at Wembley in 1993, Nicky Reid, made more than 200 appearances for Blackburn while his namesake, Steven (no relation!), had been at Ewood Park for seven seasons when he moved to the Hawthorns in 2010, initially on loan.

A few strikers have played for both clubs, perhaps the most prominent from an Albion point of view being Jason Roberts – he scored 27 goals for the Baggies in three seasons and 28 for Blackburn in seven years at Ewood Park. David Speedie played for both clubs towards the end of his career but had a much better time at Rovers, scoring 25 goals in their Division Two promotion season of 1991/92 before starting the Premier League era at Southampton – he had a brief spell on loan at Albion in their own promotion season scoring twice in nine appearances in January and February 1993. Another Baggies striker from that season, Simon Garner, was, of course, a legend at Ewood Park scoring nearly 200 goals for Rovers in more than 500 appearances over 14 years although he never got to play for them in the top flight, another who left after their promotion in 1992.

In more recent years, Tosin Adarabioyo spent a season on loan at each club from Manchester City before moving to Fulham in 2020, while Rekeem Harper had a loan spell at Blackburn from Albion in 2017 when Rovers were in League One.