Wba (a); The Review

Biggest positive

It’s looking as if this will be a quiet transfer window, but Kenny McLean feels like a new signing. His pacy, whipped, first-time cross into near-post no man’s land is exactly what you want when you’ve got strikers who can be relied on to convert.

Weekend whinge

West Brom pressed us relentlessly in the first half, forcing errors and stifling creativity. Without the physicality of Stiepermann to give a bit back, we were undoubtedly on the back foot – but to our credit we came much more into it after the break.

Moment of the match

Hal Robson-Kanu’s powerful injury-time shot was all set to deliver a crushing blow in the bottom corner until – and not for the first time in recent weeks – Tim Krul pulled off a flying save. Combine that with another solid day’s work in his ongoing campaign of winding up the opposition fans, and I can live with a bit of unwieldy distribution.

Random star performer(s)

The bar staff in The Vine, who served with efficiency and good humour despite the hordes that filled their popular pre-match venue to capacity and an hour or so’s worth of software failure on the tills that required all transactions to be done the old school way, no doubt blowing away some mental arithmetic cobwebs. It really was busy in there though, with any attempt to shuffle from one end of its Tardis-like proportions to the other turning into a full-blown expedition.

Farke watch

Talk about impact subs. First Srbeny introduced himself by leaving Gareth Barry spinning in midfield before surging forward and forcing the keeper into a good save, before the McLean and Rhodes double act with ten to go immediately paid dividends with their combination for the crucial equaliser. Daniel Farke loves it when a plan comes together.

Atmosphere rating

As befitting a match of this magnitude every seat in the stadium was sold out, and though a nervy, tight game got the better of everyone in terms of maintaining an atmosphere, it was a buoyant last ten minutes in the away end as we went away by far the happier set of supporters. Praise too is due for West Brom’s ticket prices – lb20 for adults is a flat rate for all league games at The Hawthorns. In the coming weeks it’ll cost near enough twice that to watch Norwich at Leeds (lb39), while we ourselves are charging lb40 for the East Anglian derby.

Summary

Fundamentally this was a ‘must-not-lose’ game, and that’s what we ensured, thanks to, for the eighth game in a row, a goal after the 77th minute, stretching our unbeaten league away run to a hugely impressive 12 games. With our depleted squad this challenging run of fixtures doesn’t get any easier in the next few weeks, but if we can continue to grind out the points we should be very well placed in a month or so’s time, when the road gets a little smoother for us and those around us – as they no doubt will – hit some potholes. A return to winning ways next Friday night would do nicely.