Matt Maher: West Brom risk getting stuck in Championship quagmire

Steve Bruce might remain bullish and barely three weeks into the job and with 13 matches still to play, you would expect nothing less.

But after a run of just one win in 11 games since Christmas and with the gap to the Championship top six now standing at seven points, it is increasingly difficult to make the case for the Baggies’ play-off chances.

You can’t completely write them off. England’s second tier has a habit of throwing up the unusual and we were witness to one of the most extraordinary turnarounds in these parts not so long ago.

In 2019, Villa were eight points adrift of the top six with 12 matches to play before reeling off 10 straight wins to charge into the play-offs and promotion. Back then, of course, Dean Smith’s team were galvanised by the return of Jack Grealish to a unit which also contained the likes of John McGinn, Tyrone Mings and Tammy Abraham.

Albion’s current outfit do not appear to possess the quality or, perhaps most pertinently, mentality to right the ship and find the minimum nine wins which, in the most optimistic scenario, are likely required for a top six berth. Instead, the smarter money at this point is on them recording the Baggies’ lowest league finish since 2000.

Should that transpire, there will doubtless be an inquest into how the club missed so badly with its first and best shot at getting back to the Premier League. It should quickly give way, however, to what happens next.

The spreading of parachute payments over two seasons effectively gives relegated clubs two decent bites of the cherry when it comes to engineering a top-flight return. The second time is tougher because there are three more-recently relegated sides joining the party.

But Albion themselves went up at the second attempt they were promoted under Slaven Bilic in 2020. So it can be done. It is when clubs miss with both attempts things quickly get much harder.

As a division, the Championship is like quicksand. The longer you remain it, the tougher it is to escape. In the past decade, Norwich and Villa are the only teams to have been promoted in the third season after relegation but that – crucially – was at a stage when parachute payments were stretched over a longer period. Cardiff, admittedly, made it back at the fourth attempt in 2018 but they are very much an outlier. Reading, QPR and Middlesbrough are still looking for a way out. The likes of Bolton and Sunderland found the wrong exit and are plying their trades in League One.

Despite all the talk early in the pandemic of the need for football to show more solidarity and share the wealth, the gap between the Premier League and the Championship is only growing. This is not the time to be stuck for too long on the wrong side of the divide.

More evidence of the disparity came this week when it emerged the Premier League is in talks over selling the rights to its NFTs. These non-fungible tokens, to give them their full name, are digital assets confusing to many supporters, controversial due to their links with cryptocurrencies but apparently highly lucrative. Four companies are thought to be involved in the bidding process and some pundits predict the deal could be worth as much as £400million over four years, with the money divided between the Premier League’s clubs. To put that into context, £100m a year is about the value of the EFL’s current broadcasting deal.

Much as some Albion supporters might understandably bemoan the imbalances which exist within the Premier League, the plain truth is like any other club which has spent most of its recent history in the top flight, the Baggies need its income streams to sustain their budget.

The scene is set, then, for a critical few months, whether it be a revival on the pitch to spark the current season back into life or, as seems more likely, planning in advance how to make a better fist of challenging for promotion next term.

One of the issues for Albion on that score is the relative lack of flexibility when it comes to working on a squad in desperate need of a shake-up. The decision last summer to extend the contracts of some of the club’s biggest earners increasingly looks a mis-step in common with the hurried, off-the-cuff thinking which has characterised so much of owner Guochuan Lai’s tenure and has led ultimately to this critical juncture.

What the Baggies have needed for a long time is a coherent strategy. Recently-appointed chief executive Ron Gourlay is the latest to be tasked with coming up with one.

Appointing Bruce was a shrewd move in theory but the new manager bounce has not occurred. His first four games have only served to confirm the theory problems at The Hawthorns run far deeper than the identity of the man in the dugout.

Bruce is right to say this season is not lost and he is not the type to give up the fight easily. But we are already approaching the stage where it will require something special for the Baggies to even make the play-offs. Whatever the next few weeks hold, the coming months and years are going to need the kind of shrewd decision-making which has for too long been lacking.