Analysis – Deja vu for West Brom as caretaker boss delivers results
Caretaker managers winning games towards the end of the season is becoming a common occurrence at Albion.
James Shan now has two wins from his two games and two clean sheets as well.
He may not be getting the job on a permanent basis like Darren Moore, but there is a curious sense of deja vu emerging.
Shan deserves credit for these victories, because it’s been a tricky week at Albion made much worse by the tragic passing of club secretary Simon Carrington.
Albion wore black armbands for the 34-year-old and Shan dedicated the victory to Carrington.
He was able to do that because his decision to hand Kyle Edwards his first league start for the club proved to be a masterstroke.
Edwards has been at the Baggies since he was six, so has waited 15 years for his moment.
He has seen all his friends get their chances first – Jonathan Leko, Sam Field, Rekeem Harper – but now it was his turn.
And what a turn it was, chopping past one, then two Brentford defenders as if they weren’t there.
The broad grin plastered across his face afterwards as he insisted it was luckier than it looked befitted a humble, hard-working lad from Dudley.
If that was Shan’s masterstroke, there were other decisions that also paid off.
Freshening up the central midfield and in particular, reinstating James Morrison to the line-up, worked well.
The new-found pragmatic approach, which has seen Shan field an orthodox 4-5-1 while all-but abandoning playing out from the back, suits Albion’s functional team.
It may not always have been as pretty as Brentford’s passing patterns, but without the pressure of overplaying weighing heavily on them, Albion look more comfortable.
“That’s the power of zero,” said Shan afterwards. Keep a clean sheet and you’ve got a great chance of winning.
Considering Brentford had won their last seven games at Griffin Park, and scored bundles of goals en route to those victories, this was an impressive result.
The Bees had the best of the first half and with the wind behind them they looked like taking the lead.
But Sam Johnstone was once again in no mood to relinquish his clean sheet and the Baggies weathered the storm, both figuratively and literally.
The second half was much better. It was Albion who were in control and, after Edwards wowed everyone with his Ricky Villa impression, the Baggies saw out the game professionally and with relative ease.
Haven’t we been here before? It was roughly this time last season when a pragmatic caretaker took Albion back to basics and started delivering results.
That doesn’t mean Shan should get the job permanently, or even until the end of the season. Not on his own, anyway.
He’s done a sterling job, but it would be unfair to expect him to lead Albion into the pressure cooker of the play-offs with such a skeleton coaching staff.
He would at least need an experienced coach like Michael Appleton or Craig Shakespeare alongside him for the cut and thrust of the play-offs.
Whether that option is a viable one is something the board will discuss at the start of this week.
Albion’s players are off until Wednesday and don’t have another game until a week on Friday. This is the natural moment for the decision-makers to act.
These last two games go some way to explain why Moore was sacked just over a week ago.
It came as a shock to many at the time, but pragmatism is delivering results where purity was failing.
It looks increasingly like being the right call, but now there are only eight games to go.
That’s a tricky situation. Particularly when one of your top targets is currently battling for a play-off place with Preston North End.
Particularly when the caretaker has just won two on the spin. That puts an immediate pressure on the new boss, and little margin for error.
Regardless of whether it’s Slavisa Jokanovic, Alex Neil, or someone from left-field, what last week does prove is that Shan deserves assurances over his position.
Before the Tony Pulis era, Dean Kiely and Keith Downing were constants at the club, coaches who stayed despite the changes of head coach.
Perhaps Shan can now fulfil that role, allowing for long-term planning that will help get the best out of the academy.
Whatever happens to him and whatever happens this season, he will always have this week, the week he helped Albion get back on track.
After Moore, the Baggies could probably use some outside influence.
But there was something heart-warming about Shan and Edwards, who used to work together in the under-9s, delivering three points for the first team.
It’s also worth noting Chris Brunt and James Morrison’s influence. After nearly 12 years at The Hawthorns, they have proven this week they are still relevant, still important.
The legs may be getting slower, but the brains are not, and that experience and nous shone through against a young Brentford side.
In terms of the table, Albion are stuck in no-man’s land, seven points off the top two, and 10 points clear of seventh.
But they did shave two points off that gap to the automatic promotion spots at the weekend.
Shan reckons Albion could worry the three clubs above them if they win all their remaining games. That will be a tall order but after Saturday, for some reason it now seems less ridiculous.
No pressure on the new man then...
