That said though it was a deserved win for West Brom who created chances where we failed miserably with our best efforts being two Gomis shots that were straight at Ben Foster in the home goal.
Two second half goals were enough to win it for West Brom – the first with a slice of luck as the ball rebounded to the feet of Ideye who fired home past the outstretched arm of Fabianski whilst 15 minutes later the same player set up Berahino who finished well to win the game for the Baggies.
The first in reality probably secured the win on a night where I think we could have played for a further 90 minutes and not scored a goal as we just didn’t have a threat up front to find that goal. 64% possession masks the weakness in our game at the moment with a massive void left by not just the departure of Wilfried Bony but the moment of madness from Gylfi Sigurdsson in the FA Cup defeat at Blackburn.
Gylfi of course is back for the visit of Man Utd in 10 days time but we are some way away from filling the hole left by Bony and our scouting for a striker to take on that mantle should have long started as it is difficult to see where the goals are coming from at the moment.
The blame of course should not all stop with Gomis who is starved at the moment of any decent possession and even Jefferson Montero tonight caught the disease that seems to have affected all our wide players in recent months.
The more worrying concern is not that we have lost two key players in the last few weeks but we seem to be losing our way in other places with the passing football just not there as we have grown used to seeing it for many years. Whether it is the urgency in our play that is missing but even the return to Gylfi you wonder is to make that much difference at this point in time.
There is little point in trying to dress the game up as something that it wasn’t. This was two sides who were average at best on the night and the home side won it. Neither side looked like they could actually create anything of note it was just that West Brom created the only clear cut chances of the game – Ben Foster had one of his easiest nights of the season.
We now have a 10 day break thanks to our exit from the FA Cup and we need to use that time to watch some videos of performances earlier in the season and work out what we need to do to get those displays back.
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