West Bromwich Albion are in a footballing Purgatory . . . between the top and second tier
Dec 16 2008 By Chris Lepkowski
TONY Mowbray will never make much of a soothsayer.
Back in the summer he said Albion didn’t need to spend big to prosper in the Premier League.
He also announced to the world that the Baggies could finish near to mid-table.
And then he famously declared that Albion’s playing style was suited to the top flight more than other, more direct, methods.
Russell Grant he ain’t.
It does, however, underline how much of a culture shock the Premier League has been to Albion’s boss. He is grasping for grip on the steepest of learning curves.
I caught up with him at the Albion training ground yesterday to find him in a reflective mood. He wanted to talk, he wanted to unload.
He, unlike so many in football, is willing to listen. There are those in my industry willing him to fail.
Perhaps because they think they know better or maybe because he doesn’t answer questions to suit their headlines.
This is certainly his most testing time in management. He has realised that our Premier League is no SPL, where Celtic and Rangers are nowhere near the middling teams in England’s top flight, let alone the Big Four.
He needs friends around him, yet outside the four walls of the training ground he is losing them as quickly as he made them.
How easily people forget his transformation of Bryan Robson’s collection of under-performing, self-indulgent Championship mis-fits into the club’s first title winners for 80-odd years.
Mowbray hasn’t become a bad manager.
So what’s gone wrong? He raised expectation at a time when Albion fans were sucked into believing that the club could fizz the ball around on the Premier League stage without troubling the backmarkers.
Ambition is no crime, but Mowbray must regret those words now.
Hull City and Stoke haven’t helped his cause – their journeymen are looking better than Albion’s Premier League rookies.
His transfers have been a mixed bag. Zuiverloon had everyone jumping up and down in
