Kyle Bartley puts the final touch to a perfectly executed West Brom plan
Kyle Bartley has endured and enjoyed quite the rollercoaster inside a few months this season and now his and Albion’s recovery appear intertwined.
Albion’s most impressive victory yet from just four in the Championship this season made it back-to-back wins for the first time since May and successive clean sheets – which felt an inpossibility barely a couple of weeks ago.
Defender Bartley, often-maligned, sometimes jeered and guilty of some haphazard displays this season, was the unlikely goal hero at QPR’s Loftus Road, where the Carlos Corberan era continues to take off at a fair pace.
The centre-half, for the second game running having been recalled following suspension by Corberan, gave a dominant and powerful performance capped by a towering header in front of a booming away end to claim all three points.
The defender’s relationship with Albion fans is a bit of a rollercoaster itself. He slid on his knees in celebration, fingers in his ears – perhaps a nod to the boos he received in the home defeat to Birmingham – before fans cried “Kyle Bartley Ballon d’Or” in suggestion of football’s greatest individual accolade.
In particular fixtures and circumstances Bartley can be a most effective stopper. His aerial prowess is among the best in the division. He may lack in speed and movement but Albion can take advantage of the qualities he does possess.
It has not been an easy Hawthorns career for the former Arsenal and Swansea man but he has impressed Corberan in training and understandably so in displays against Blackpool and the Rs.
The Baggies head coach rates the 31-year-old as among the Championship’s top centre-backs and said after the narrow victory it was his task to redevelop Bartley to that level. If there is one thing Corberan relishes, it is the prospect of development.
He is certainly developing Albion into a much superior and resilient unit.
Saturday’s victory was unquestionably the team’s most pleasing of the season so far.
It didn’t come with the late drama and importance of last Tuesday’s home success over Blackpool, the Taylor Gardner-Hickman-inspired managerless win at Reading or the five-goal false dawn under Steve Bruce – but it had a more satisfying element.
The performance of Corberan’s side was packed full of grit, determination, fight and belief. It must be said that so many of those qualities have been lacking more often than not this season.
More so it was an example of a well-drilled outfit working in tandem as a unit. It was noticeable, especially without the ball, how Albion shuffled together in their solid 4-2-3-1 shape.
It was not a classic from a neutral’s spectacle but it certainly was a classic team performance and game plan executed to a tee.
It was not a rip-roaring, attacking masterpiece full of fluent football and chance after chance after chance, but it did not need to be. Indeed, it is more satisfying for Baggies fans that their side won a game in which they did not have to be at their sharpest in attack.
All too often this season Albion have forced however many shots at goal but come away empty-handed after a hard-luck story. Here they were clinical and economical.
And, by the way, that is now two set-piece goals in two games after many, many months and even years of barren runs from dead balls. They have yielded two goals in successive 1-0 wins. Crucial.
With Karlan Grant injured and Daryl Dike not judged ready to be involved – he could feature on the way back from injury for the under-21s at Keys Park in Hednesford tonight – Corberan decided to leave Brandon Thomas-Asante for an impact from the bench and go with Matty Phillips, not a natural striker, as a lone centre-forward.
Albion were excellent for 15 minutes. They blew a high-flying QPR side – whose manager Michael Beale had attracted the attention of Wolves – away. They should have had a lead to show for it but Grady Diangana fluffed his lines with the goal gaping and Darnell Furlong got a header from a corner all wrong.
The hosts responded, but without really laying siege to the Baggies goal. Alex Palmer was strong between the sticks but was rarely stretched mainly due to powerful and dominant displays by Bartley and Dara O’Shea who blocked, headed, repelled and intercepted everything that came their way.
Ahead of them was the tireless Jayson Molumby and Okay Yokuslu who both put in a huge shift to keep Albion going in midfield.
The Albion picture looks much brighter in the space of a week with six points from six. With one more game, at home to Stoke, to come before the World Cup break, it is genuinely exciting to see what a head coach like Corberan, with his appetite for developing on the training pitch, can deliver.
