The new West Brom
There were about five minutes at the beginning of West Brom’s match with Manchester United at the weekend when Baggies players were passing and moving and enjoying themselves at a rate we have rarely, if ever, seen at the Hawthorns in the past few seasons.
In other words, West Brom didn’t look like a Tony Pulis team at all, which, as we know, typically line up with 11 center-backs whose stylistic preference is to kick the ball as high as humanly possible at every opportunity. That isn’t true, strictly speaking, but it’s an enjoyable lie, especially now this particular Pulis side appears to be on the brink of a brave new era.
The Baggies are currently eighth in the league. They’ve scored 23 goals in 17 matches, or 1.35 a match, up from 0.89 last season. Or, my favorite: they’ve scored three or more goals four times in the league already this term. In 56 league matches under Pulis prior to this season, they’d done that twice — once in 2015 against a Chelsea side that had already wrapped up the title, and once in 2016 against a Crystal Palace side in the middle of a 14 match winless run that spanned five months and yielded five points from a possible 42.
To be clear, West Brom aren’t Barcelona circa 2009, or even Swansea circa 2012. They’re actually averaging a smidgen less possession than they did last season (42.2 percent in 2015-16 vs. 41.3 percent in 2016-17) and their pass success rate, a lowly 70 percent, is identical to what it was a year ago. But they’re shooting more and they’re shooting on target more and they’re dribbling more and, again, they’re scoring a lot more.
There are reasons for this, no doubt, like, for example, the players. Salomon Rondon — who remains one of the league’s most underappreciated forwards, possibly because he scored his first ever Premier League hat-trick the other day and all the goals were headers (and this is a footer’s world), or possibly because he’s a forward who plays for Tony Pulis — Rondon has seven goals and two assists.
Matt Phillips, bought from QPR in the summer, has three goals and five assists, and does things like run at defenders and shoot. Nacer Chadli, who, despite the best efforts of his hairdresser, could never manage to hold down a spot in Tottenham’s starting XI, has added four goals of his own. Chris Brunt and James Morrison, finally, can both kick the jiminy jillikers Radioactive Man out of a ball, which as far as elite attacking skills go is comfortably the most Pulisian.
That these players are good isn’t really a surprise — West Brom are now in their seventh consecutive season in the top flight, and are therefore extravagantly wealthy. (The Premier League’s mid-table is a much more glamorous place than it appears.) The surprise is that they’ve been playing with this freedom in such a restrictive system, and all for a manager who’s never shied away from his reputation as a coach who values, above all, the less fine things in soccer, like two-footed lunges and adequately-executed defensive headers.
The apparent change in style is even more surprising when you consider (a) last season was one of the most stereotypically Pulisian of Pulis’ career — finishing 14th with the league’s second worst attack and its seventh best defense is an amazing achievement, and amazing not really in the sense of impressive, but in the sense the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest is amazing, which is to say amazing that such a thing could exist at all — and (b) it’s very hard for managers to adopt new styles. It’s just a hard thing to do, to start coaching a team in a completely different way to the way you used to coach them. That’s why the one thing every manager in the world has been accused of is stubbornness. But they’re not being stubborn, not always; it’s just hard.
Pulis has always been the closest thing we have to the living embodiment of mid-table obscurity. But here West Brom are, running up against the very limits of the obscure. They won’t finish in the top six. Those spots seem now rather comfortably to belong to the six richest teams in the league. But they have a real shot at seventh (though I’d estimate Southampton and Everton are still favored to finish above them), which is the first step to both over-ambition and crippling insecurity. Seventh is where teams have to stop asking themselves what they are and start asking themselves what they want to be.
And here is Tony Pulis, who has always known exactly what he is, and now, apparently despite his best tactical efforts, appears to be changing. The question is, if this change continues, how much will he be able to embrace it?
Weekly Awards
The Tony Pulis Award for Winning While Playing Miserably: West Ham
I don’t think it’s any exaggeration to suggest West Ham were one of the most exciting teams in the league last season. The Hammers have been less-than-exciting this season, however, and are only now beginning to pull themselves away from the relegation zone. After beating Burnley and Hull 1-0 in consecutive home matches, Slaven Bilic’s side have the honor of having every one of their five victories in the league this season come by a score of 1-0, which is as bad as it sounds. That may be the London Stadium effect, or it might just be the way a team ravaged by injuries and then slowly drained of self-confidence has to win matches. Either way, it isn’t pretty.
The Burnley Award for Terrible Away Records: Burnley
Burnley’s away record is so bad as to make you wonder whether their home record isn’t a clerical error. The Clarets have lost seven and drawn one of their eight away matches, while scoring a total of two goals. One of those goals — much, I assume, to everyone’s surprise — came at White Hart Lane on Sunday, and then, to no one’s surprise, was very swiftly put to waste as Tottenham came back to win. There are a lot of clichés about avoiding relegation. One of the most popular is that as long as you can win consistently at home, you’ll be fine. Burnley themselves put that to the test in 2009-10, losing 17 times on their travels on their way to an 18th-place finish. Their home record’s better now than it was then, but their away record could end up being worse.
The Paolo Di Canio Award for Divisive Performances: Mesut Ozil
Ross Barkley very nearly won this for an outstandingly bad tackle on Jordan Henderson in the Merseyside derby Monday, but Henderson seems to have forgiven him, so we will too. Instead, Mesut Ozil wins for a somewhat absent performance against Manchester City. Ozil didn’t play well, much like at least eight other Arsenal players, but because, I presume, his version of not playing well looks a lot like not doing anything, it sent the Arsenal-verse into meltdown, especially given he may or may not be in line for a new contract. I don’t get it, personally. Ozil is now, just as he has always been, a pleasure to watch, and a player, not insignificantly, whose ability to go unnoticed is directly related to his ability to be so good. Ozil makes Arsenal better. For those who think a bad performance away from home against an elite team is grounds to let his contract lapse, I’ll say this: you’ll miss him when he’s gone.
The Radamel Falcao Award for Is It 2013?: Alvaro Negredo
Middlesbrough dominated Swansea on Saturday, which should be serious, serious cause for concern for the Swans. It was also cause for celebration for Alvaro Negredo, who scored twice in a 3-0 win. His second goal was a penalty, but his first was an exquisite first-time finish into the bottom corner, the sort of goal that was a regular occurrence for him at Sevilla four long seasons ago, and is now a only a reminder of how far he’s fallen.
The Phil Neville Award for Getting Better With Age: Zlatan Ibrahimovic
Zlatan Ibrahimovic is a very ridiculous man, what with his carefully choreographed arrogance and his not-unrelated willingness to talk about himself in the third person. He’s also, even at 35, an exquisite player, easily the best in a squad boasting a lot more quality than it has sometimes seemed this season. Paul Pogba (and Wayne Rooney, too, probably), who’s been getting better and better the past few weeks, should be paying attention. Ibrahimovic is not only good, but a lesson in the value of understanding your own game, its limits and its possibilities. The Swede scored twice more at the weekend to bring his season’s league tally to 11, and to affirm, if there was any remaining doubt, that he’s still one of the best in the world.