Kevin Phillips: West Brom are all out of cards to play
Albion’s decision to give beleaguered boss Alan Pardew a stay of execution will have come as a surprise to many. It certainly did to me.
All the talk prior to Saturday was that Pardew needed a win at Watford in order to save his job, writes Kevin Phillips.
Instead, the Baggies slumped to a sixth straight defeat which left them eight points adrift of safety at the bottom of the Premier League, with just nine games to play.
I never like to see any manager lose his job but after recording just one league win in 15 games since he replaced Tony Pulis, it’s something of an understatement to say Pardew is on thin ice.
Having opted not to pull the trigger, you almost have to assume the club’s board feel he still represents their best chance of pulling off the most miraculous of escapes.
The situation might be dire and odds stacked against them, yet Albion – for now at least – must keep believing there is a way out of trouble.
Then again, perhaps the decision to stick with Pardew, for now, is simply a case of the board realising they have run out of cards to play.
Everything seems to have been tried to give Albion some upward momentum. Nothing has worked.
Pulis was sacked and Pardew replaced him, in the hope of giving the team a boost which never materialised. In the meantime, the new boss has tried all sorts of different tactics and formations, while there have been numerous appeals to supporters.
Yet the same problems which afflicted Albion in September still afflict them now.
They don’t score enough goals and they are too easy to score against.
It is fair to question whether any new manager coming into the club could save the Baggies from the drop.
For several weeks now it feels as though we have been saying Albion – and Pardew – were in the last-chance saloon. Surely this Saturday’s home game with Leicester really does represent the final chance to get the win which, they will hope, starts the revival.
Back in 2015 when I was on the Foxes coaching staff, it was a late comeback to win at The Hawthorns which helped kick-start our unlikely run to survival.
That is the kind of thing the Baggies need themselves for now – something, anything, to restore that bit of hope.
You can talk about managers all you like. Ultimately, it is down to the players to create something, a moment which might turn their fortunes around.
To this point, Albion’s players haven’t been able to find it.
Fail to win on Saturday and we will be almost at be at the point where the Baggies must accept their fate and start planning for next season.
The Championship is a very different division to the one they were promoted out of eight years ago. Not so long ago there was a clear gulf in quality from the top of the second tier to the Premier League. These days I’m not so sure it exists.
Until recently, clubs relegated out of the Premier League could always be fairly confident of fighting for promotion the following season.
That simply isn’t the case any longer. Just look at Hull and Sunderland, who both came down last year and are now struggling again near the foot of the Championship. It now takes time to build a team which can cope with physical nature of the division and the relentless succession of games.
Though they might have held back on making a call over Pardew for now, Albion still face some huge decisions over the next few weeks and months. That will particularly be the case if – as seems likely – they need to get into shape for a Championship campaign.
Pardew might have survived the weekend, but Steve Cotterill was not so fortunate at Birmingham City.
The decision to axe Cotterill, after less than six months in charge, was far more straightforward.
While some thoughts at Albion may have begun to turn towards the long-term, Blues are very much still out for a short-term fix. Just two points adrift of safety, they clearly still believe a new man can come in and be the difference. At time of writing, it looks as though the new man is going to be Garry Monk, who I know from our days as team-mates at Southampton.
Garry doesn’t have a huge amount of experience at the bottom end of the Championship but is a smart, young manager with a point to prove after leaving Middlesbrough earlier this season.
Blues are a club who have made a host of poor decisions since sacking Gary Rowett 15 months ago. Let’s hope appointing Monk is one they’ve finally got right.
