Goal-shy Baggies need a spark at Luton

Brummie Road Ender

·31 de outubro de 2024

Goal-shy Baggies need a spark at Luton

Luton Town v West Bromwich Albion; Kenilworth Road, Friday 1st November 2024, 8pm

The Baggies are in the worst run of results of Carlos Corberán’s reign without a win in six games but, in my opinion, they are not playing badly. The previous four games have all ended as draws with the Baggies dominating the play but failing to find the winner and few would have been surprised if they had claimed the extra eight points and be sitting joint top of the table.

The fact remains, however, that they did not win any of those games but Albion remain in the top six. Of the four drawn games, Millwall was perhaps the most disappointing in terms of chances created, but the Baggies have steadily improved in each game since then so much so that they had 18 attempts on goal in the game against Cardiff City on Saturday. If you review the statistics on the matches on WhoScored.com, the primary comment about Albion in each of those games is “were poor at finishing” which pretty much sums it up. The Baggies have scored just twice at the Hawthorns this season but their total xG is 10.8. They are creating enough chances to win games, but they are not converting them.

Vídeos OneFootball

Corberán has been rotating his attacking players in recent weeks looking to find a solution to the scoring problems without success. He hasn’t yet given Devante Cole a chance, bar a few minutes on the opening day at QPR and a start on the right side of the attacking setup at Fleetwood in the League Cup. One assumes that there are good reasons for that – he did have a place on the bench on Saturday, but that was most likely because Lewis Dobbin was carrying a knock and dropped out – but is it time to try something different?

With Kyle Bartley already out for a few weeks, Corberán saw two more centre backs depart the field with injuries against Cardiff as both Paddy McNair and Semi Ajayi limped off. The news on Thursday was that both would be out for extended periods leaving Mason Holgate and Torbjørn Heggem as the only central defensive options – Holgate’s eleven minute spell on Saturday is his only time on the pitch this season while the Norwegian had only spent seven minutes at centre back before McNair’s injury.

Could that crisis at the back be an excuse or, perhaps more kindly, a trigger, to change formation? The majority of the Spaniard’s tenure has seen Albion deploy a 4-2-3-1 formation and, in the last twelve months, he has only once gone away from a back four and even that could be a matter for debate – Okay Yokuşlu seemed to have played as a third centre back at Leicester in April. A back three, potentially with Furlong as a third centre back and Fellows as a wing back, could also provide the opportunity to play all three of Mowatt, Molumby and Račić, arguably three of Albion’s most consistent performers this season. It would be a surprise, but Corberán does throw in the occasional curve ball, and he did suggest in his press conference on Thursday that Heggem would be comfortable in a back four or a back three.

If there is one tactical tweak I would like to see, if it could be described as that, it is to be quicker on the break. Confidence has a big part to play when it comes to playing the riskier passes that can open up a team quickly. Corberán does prize possession, and whether that is weighing harder on the players than it should with confidence low, I’m not sure. Without being in the dressing room to hear the instructions and discussions, it’s impossible to know, but I would certainly be in favour of a little more risk taking.

Friday’s opponents are enduring a difficult campaign back in the Championship. Having received plaudits for their performances in the Premier League last season, Luton ended up losing 12 of their final 16 games of the campaign and seem to have carried on that losing feeling into the second tier. Had they not beat arch rivals, Watford, a couple of weeks ago, there is a good chance that Rob Edwards may have lost his job already. That 3-0 victory against the Hornets is their only win in the last six (one more than the Baggies have managed in that period!), and they are in the bottom three having lost seven of their opening twelve games.

They looked to be turning a corner last weekend when they were 2-0 up at Coventry at half-time, but they put in a dreadful second half display and ended up losing 3-2 leaving Edwards to comment that “I feel as bad as I’ve probably ever felt in football right now”. His task is further complicated by a lengthening injury list which includes Amari’i Bell, Teden Mengi, Reece Burke, Mads Andersen and Reuell Walters and suspensions to Tom Holmes and Alfie Doughty.

It may be a good time to play the Hatters and Albion need to take advantage – I feel sure that they will create chances, as they have done in recent games, but they need to start finding the net. Luton are unlikely to set up with a low block as they need to start winning games themselves given their precarious position, so I’m sure there will be opportunities to exploit gaps at the back. It’s up to the Baggies players to do that.

History

The Baggies have lost just one of the last eleven meetings with Luton Town, a run that dates back to 1997. That one defeat was 2-0 at Kenilworth Road in February 2022, Luton’s only home win over Albion since 1994. On their last visit, Carlos Corberán’s team were 2-0 down inside ten minutes but came back to win 3-2.

The only current member of either squad to have played for the opposing side is Baggies number one, Alex Palmer, who played twice for the Hatters during a loan spell in 2022.

He is not the first goalkeeper to have played for both clubs, with a couple of Albion favourites between the sticks having spent time in that corner of Bedfordshire. Tony Godden had a loan spell at Luton from Albion, playing a dozen games in 1983, while Dean Kiely also went on loan to Kenilworth Road – he was at Portsmouth a the time and played eleven games in the autumn of 2006 before making a permanent move to the Hawthorns in January 2007. Another ‘keeper who may be less remembered by Baggies fans is Andy Dibble – he spent four years at Luton in the 1980s and spent a few months on loan at the Hawthorns from Manchester City in 1992. He briefly returned to Kenilworth Road in 1997.

As well as Alex Palmer, a few other Baggies academy products have passed through Luton in their subsequent careers – one of Izzy Brown’s numerous loan spells from Chelsea was at Luton in 2019/20 when he was in the same squad as Donervan Daniels who was in the same development squad at the Hawthorns. Another of their Baggies youth teammates, George Thorne, had been on loan at Kenilworth Road the season before.

A couple of centre backs were transferred from Luton to Albion in the noughties with Curtis Davies the first to make the move in September 2005. Two years later, Leon Barnett made a similar move after Davies had moved onto Aston Villa.

John Hartson, who played alongside Davies in 2006/07, started his league career at Kenilworth Road in 1992 while another member of that squad, Chris Perry, would move to Luton from Albion in the summer of 2007. Also moving to the Hatters that summer was Paul Peschisolido in what proved to be the Canadian’s last move of his career in England – he had spent two years at the Hawthorns in the 1990s.

Others to have played for both clubs include Imre Varadi, Stacey North, Callum McManaman, Andy King, Marc Wilson, Tony Grealish and Brendan Galloway. Finally, one of the Baggies’ greatest ever goalscorers, Derek Kevan, scored six goals in a dozen games for Luton in the 1966/67 campaign.