Albion’s Second Tier Season Comparison – 42 games | OneFootball

Albion kept their play-off hopes alive by beating Watford at the Hawthorns for the first time since December 2016, also ending a run of three successive defeats. Defeat for Middlesbrough means that the Baggies moved up into seventh spot, two points behind Coventry City in sixth ahead of the Sky Blues’ match away to Hull City on Monday.

Karlan Grant scored his seventh goal of the season, but his first in 2025, and it moved him to joint second in the Baggies scoring charts with Alex Mowatt – both players are five behind leading scorer, Josh Maja, who hasn’t played since 4th January.

Albion’s tally of wins in the current campaign is their lowest in a second tier season since 1999/2000. in 2021/22, the Baggies earned 16 wins from the first 42 games, compared to 14 this season, but Steve Bruce’s team had scored only 47 goals compared to this season’s tally of 51. Both teams had amassed 60 points, but it was only good enough for 11th place five years ago.

Tony Mowbray’s team head to Coventry on Friday looking to win back-to-back games for the first time since September, but game 43 has not generally been kind for Albion in our comparison seasons – in the 21 second tier campaigns since it moved to a 24 team division, the Baggies have won game 43 on only five occasions, four of which came in seasons when they won promotion. The outlier seasons were in 2019 and 2020 – Jimmy Shan’s team beat Hull City 3-2 in April 2019 while Slaven Bilić’s promotion winning team were held 1-1 by Blackburn Rovers in July 2020.

One of those game 43 victories was a pivotal one on what was Albion’s last visit to Coventry City’s former home, Highfield Road. On Easter Monday 2002, Baggies fans watched Manchester City beat Wolves in the early kick off before seeing Bob Taylor score the winning goal against the Sky Blues for Albion to move level on points with their Black Country rivals with three games to go.

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