Comment: Darren Moore can leave West Brom with head held high

Jake Livermore’s goal against QPR made it 10 points out of a possible 12 after away wins at Stoke City and Villa.

At the time, the 3-2 win at Loftus Road felt like it could be a defining moment of the season. The Baggies were on the march.

Three games later and Moore is out of the job after back-to-back defeats against two of the best sides in the league and a draw at home to bottom club Ipswich Town.

If that sounds harsh, it’s because, on face value, it is. The overriding reaction to Albion’s statement on Saturday night was shock. The overriding response was condemnation.

Albion are fourth in the Championship, not 14th. Only leaders Norwich City have scored more goals than them this season.

But the reality is Moore has struggled to convince this season before this damaging three-game run left Albion nine points off the top two. The Baggies were on a worryingly downward turn.

The fact he was taken to a private room and delivered the news less than an hour after full-time proves the board already had it in mind.

Being outplayed at home by the club now seven points adrift at the bottom of the table encouraged them to act.

Moore has plenty of strengths. His galvanising character was the perfect tonic last season when Albion needed a pillar to lean on.

He’s a leader, a man-manager capable of getting players to run through brick walls.

Ingrained in the club, he knew exactly what it needed after years of grinding to 40 points in the Premier League.

He had the right idea about how to tackle this season and his desire to play attacking passing football was admirable.

The problem was, it was too rarely carried out convincingly. Purity replaced pragmatism.

A suicidal insistence on playing out from the back has not improved over the course of the season when you’d expect such ideas to develop and such skills to take hold. Albion rarely dominated games.

Even when they struck four past Norwich, Bristol City, and Rotherham, those wins were not as one-sided as the scoreline suggested.

There’s an argument that is just the Championship, a fiercely contested division with rollercoaster games.

But the counter-argument is moments of individual brilliance rather than cohesive team performances won Albion a number of games this season.

In recent weeks, Moore has struggled to recover from Harvey Barnes’s return to Leicester City and failed to solve a number of problems.

It took him until his final game to move Dwight Gayle into a central position.

There’s also no question that, over the course of the season, his in-game management has cost Albion points.

He has failed to address problems during games and that deficiency shone most glaringly at Elland Road, where he persisted with a pedestrian midfield and a 4-3-3 system despite being completely overrun.

Was he ready for the cut and thrust of the play-offs, where decisions must be made on the spot? Arguably not.

There was also the curious partnership with Graeme Jones, Moore’s No.2 with aspirations of being a No.1.

Jones is due to be named Luton Town boss in the summer, and seemed to have too much influence on a side he was leaving.

Albion played the same systems he had used with Belgium and he admitted himself on national radio that Moore let him get away with his own ideas.

How well Moore would have done without him is unknown, and the season could have been much worse than this respectable showing.

But Jones clashed with the board on January deadline day over a loan for left-back Bryan Oviedo, a player he coached at Everton.

That could hardly have helped Moore’s cause, and neither did the head coach's decision to stick with Jones when offered a chance to change

Despite Moore’s deficiencies, this is still a brutal sacking of a rookie manager.

He has been made a victim of the worrying financial situation and was given the bullet because the Baggies are on the clock.

Owners foot the bill in the Championship but Guochuan Lai either cannot or does not want to invest any money.

And so Albion need to win promotion while their parachute payments still give them a financial edge.

This is by far the club’s best chance of getting back up, but what’s worrying is how desperate it seems to be.

The board have also taken this decision in light of their own inaction last season.

Alan Pardew was allowed to drag on week after week, despite losing nine games in a row. By contrast, Moore won four and drew two of his last nine in the league.

It might be argued that at least chief executive Mark Jenkins – the only person involved in both decisions – has learned from his mistake.

But considering the contrast of the two characters involved, pulling the trigger on Moore early while letting Pardew linger leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

After healing the divisions in the club, Moore deserved the chance to succeed, or the chance to fail.

Football is an emotional sport and relies on emotionally-invested fans, and yet this was an emotionless decision.

Perhaps that cold and calculated decision-making is for the best, but it doesn't make it any less difficult to stomach.

Technical director Luke Dowling wasn’t at the club last season, but he is the one leading the search for Moore's successor and is eyeing up former Watford colleague Slavisa Jokanovic.

There is a lot of pressure on that appointment, because it has to subsequently justify this decision which has split opinion among supporters.

One thing’s for sure, Moore leaves with his head held high.

He was given the caretaker job purely to steer Albion down with dignity, but he vastly exceeded expectations.

He gave it everything he could, and healed a toxic club. He brought sell-out crowds back to The Hawthorns, he made it fun to go to games again.

In a bygone era when the financial disparity between the top two tiers wasn’t so pronounced, or with another owner willing to actually invest, he may still be in the job.

Who knows how he would have developed, who knows if he would have grown into the manager every Albion fan was praying he would.

Moore was a man who needed time. Unfortunately for him, he was at a club that doesn’t have any.