Mowbray still looking for his best team

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·21 Februari 2025

Mowbray still looking for his best team

West Bromwich Albion v Oxford United; The Hawthorns, Saturday 22nd February 2025, 3pm

Albion welcome Oxford United to the Hawthorns this weekend, the first time the U’s have been in West Bromwich for a league game in the 21st century. It also comes after a full week without at game, only the second in Tony Mowbray’s current tenure, which will have given Mogga and his coaching team more opportunity to introduce his ideas and understand his players better.

It’s fair to say that results have been mixed since Mowbray took charge a little under five weeks ago with two wins and three defeats from six matches, while there has been little sign that the head coach knows his best team. I guess that is understandable given the lack of time on the training pitch, while reduced availability through injury and suspension has also had an impact, and it may be a few weeks yet before we see any sort of consistency in selection.

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Kyle Bartley will serve the final match of his red card suspension while Jed Wallace is the latest member of the injured list. Daryl Dike is being carefully managed and the only new signing we are yet to see, Tammer Bany, is also nearing match fitness and both are expected to be in the matchday squad on Saturday, leaving Josh Maja as the other man who remains unavailable. The other complication for Mowbray is that the performances of the players themselves have been inconsistent, and he has recently said that he hasn’t yet worked out who he can trust. As well as selection, Mowbray also seems to be unsure as what formation he wants to play. I feel that he is a 4-4-2 man but I’m not sure he feels that he has the players to play that consistently. He seems to start with 4-3-3, or a 4-2-3-1, depending on how you view it, but more often than not has ended with a 4-4-2.

It’s interesting to look at the evolution of his team selection. At Boro’ in his first game, he basically left things alone but it was all change for his first home game, against Portsmouth, with a 4-4-2 with two false nines in Wallace and Diangana, his two favourite wingers in Fellows and Johnston, with a never-before-seen central midfield pairing of Swift and Mowatt. After a 5-1 win, it was no surprise to see the same starting line-up at Plymouth, but after a very different result and new signings, the team against Sheffield Wednesday was very different – a three-man midfield with Molumby and Price coming in to join Mowatt, while Fellows and Johnston were both left out as the wide forward roles were filled by Grant and Diangana either side of new man, Armstrong. That Albion’s opener didn’t come until Fellows and Johnston came on led Mowbray to select them both to start the next match against Blackburn, with the central midfield unchanged, a formation that didn’t seem to work at all, leading to wholesale changes at Millwall last weekend.

Obviously, we shouldn’t expect the same line-up every week – the squad is there to be used and different opponents present different challenges – but it seems clear to me that Mowbray is still unsure of what combination works best. His ideas are obviously different to those that the players had been working with under Corberán, and his desire to let the players “off the leash” as he put it is not that straightforward. It is perhaps no surprise that Albion haven’t kept a clean sheet since the Spaniard departed for Valencia, but it is disappointing that only against Portsmouth, when they played without a recognised striker, has Mowbray’s team looked like scoring multiple goals. That now looks to have been a false dawn, but Mowbray deserves time to get his ideas across as he did in his first tenure. Thankfully, inconsistency amongst all of those chasing the play-offs mean that Albion remain in the thick of the race.

Saturday’s opponents, Oxford United, are also in the early days of a new manager struggling to get a tune out of his new charges. Gary Rowett took over at the Kassam Stadium before Christmas with the U’s on a run of one win in sixteen games. Under Rowett, they won five and drew two of their first seven games but are now on a run of five games without a win since the 3-2 win over Luton Town a month ago, scoring just twice in that period. The 2-0 home defeat to Portsmouth last weekend will have been particularly disappointing, but they remain nine points clear of the bottom three but will be keen to get back to winning ways as quickly as possible.

For Albion, this is a game that they really should be winning, and need to win. The race for the final two places in the top six remains tight albeit Blackburn Rovers, in fifth, now have a three point advantage over the Baggies. Looking the other way, teams as low as Preston North End, just one place but four points above Oxford in 15th, will feel they are still in with a shout being just six points behind Albion. Mowbray’s team have a goal difference advantage over every club outside the top four and may see Saturday’s game as an opportunity to improve that further, but three points is the first target.

History

Oxford United visit the Hawthorns for a league game for the first time this century having last shared a division with the Baggies in the 1998/99 season. The U’s did come to the Shrine in 2014 for a League Cup tie that the hosts eventually won on penalties after the game finished 1-1 after extra time. Australian full back, Jason Davidson, scored the winning penalty after Boaz Myhill had saved from U’s skipper Jake Wright – he had earlier saved two of the visitors’ efforts after James Morrison and Brown Ideye both missed their own spot kicks.

Former Baggies midfielder, Michael Appleton, was in charge of Oxford at that time, having taken over at the Kassam Stadium in the summer of 2014. After being relegated to the third tier in 1999, the U’s found themselves in Division Three for the 2001/02 season and dropped out of the Football League four years later. By then, former manager Jim Smith, who had taken Oxford to the top flight in 1985, was back at the club and he took them to the Conference play-off final in 2007, but they lost to Exeter City. It would take another three years for the U’s to get back to the Football League, beating York City in 2010 under the stewardship of current Sheffield United boss, Chris Wilder. Wilder helped establish Oxford as a solid League Two club before resigning in January 2014 to take over at Northampton Town. Former Albion player, the late Mickey Lewis, was put in caretaker charge before Gary Waddock was appointed for an unsuccessful spell ahead of Appleton joining in the summer. Ultimately, it was Appleton that guided the U’s back to the third tier in 2015 where they remained until Des Buckingham completed the job Liam Manning had started by winning promotion to the Championship via the play-offs last summer.

Saturday will be just the 25th meeting between the two clubs with Albion having won twelve to Oxford’s five. Four of the U’s wins came in successive meetings in 1997 and 1998, but only one of them came at the Hawthorns, in October 1997. Albion were second in the table at kick-off and took the lead through Andy Hunt. That was cancelled out by a goal from the delightfully named Nicky Banger, before future Baggie Darren Purse scored a second half winner for the visitors. United were managed by Denis Smith who would take over at the Hawthorns two months later after Ray Harford resigned to join QPR.

Neither side has ever scored more than three goals in a fixture between the teams, with both having recorded 3-0 victories. Oxford’s was in Albion’s last ever visit to the Manor Ground in September 1998 while Albion’s was in the U’s second visit to the Hawthorns in September 1974 – on that occasion, Tony Brown, Alan Merrick and Len Cantello were the goalscorers in a Division Two fixture.

In December 1996, both sides scored three in a remarkable fixture at the Hawthorns. Nigel Jemson gave the visitors the lead before Richard Sneekes equalised just before the break and an Andy Hunt penalty on the stroke of half time gave Albion the lead. Late goals from Matt Murphy and Matt Elliott looked to have given Oxford the win, but Bob Taylor popped up with a last minute equaliser.