Tonda Eckert and Saints turn their sights towards West Brom at St Mary’s under the lights on a Tuesday. If you look at current form then Saints have three home wins in a row and West Brom have six away defeat in a row but as we all know, Saints are and have historically been the team you want to play if you are on a shit run.

Ryan Mason is the current manager of West Brom and he could really do with the respective streaks ending today. He is yet another manager at Championship level who was not qualified enough to land the job that he got. Purely the fact he had Spurs attached to his name, seems to be the reason that he got a decent job in the Championship at a club that has the potential to be up near the top of the division and challenging to get into the Premier League. With the table being as close as it is, it’s hard to write West Brom off completely but over the course of the season they have looked more like a club that’s more likely to finish 16th than 6th. A quick consultation of West Brom fan opinion finds it very heavily waited towards Mason getting the boot and hopefully he’s under a lot more pressure at 10 pm tonight. Maybe there’s a chance that the players in the Baggies shirts today will want to get rid of him and we just phone a performance in. Though we all love our own players at the moment because they are winning games, you don’t have to go back too far to find them doing just that to hasten the departure of Will Still.

West Brom still have some decent players from when we played them in the playoffs a couple of years ago. Mikey Johnson can always do something from one wing and Karlan Grant from the other. New signing Aune Heggebo is a threat at number nine and he plays international football for Norway, where he’s trying to earn a place in the World Cup squad, alongside Erling Haaland. Hopefully he hasn’t learnt too much from the Ultimate Viking on his international trips. As well as their decent players, they also have Jayson Molumby who must be better than what I’ve seen because every time I’ve watched him, he’s put in a performance to put him in the conversation for worst footballer I’ve ever seen. A bit like ex-Skate Michael Brown in that he just has running around and kicking people and that is it. He’ll be brilliant today – just you watch.

Tonda Eckert has confirmed there are no new injuries in the squad so I’m expecting Saints to be completely unchanged from the starting lineup that we had against Birmingham on Saturday. One thing that we will have to do today is to compete physically because I have a feeling that West Brom will be pretty direct and as it was when we legendarily blocked it in the playoff game at St Mary’s, the long throw will be used as a weapon. Saints have to bring the energy, though it might need a little more patience today because having criticised his team for not doing the basics on Saturday, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we have some low block shit going on from the visitors.

We should have enough to win this came comfortably, so let’s fucking do it

Just the one change with Josh Q coming in for Captain Jack and away we go and five minutes in West Brom are wide open with THB picking out a pass to Fellows further forward and he turns away from two of his former teammates and heads goalwards, leaving them for dust, before playing it right to Scienza who is never going to miss and with a flurry of the right boot he drills it across the goalkeeper into the far side of the net. Brilliant by Fellows and clinical by Scienza. Fellows was always going to contribute today

West Brom manage a bit of a response with Price lashing an effort a couple of feet over the bar, but it’s just a bit of an interlude and West Brom cause damage themselves by knocking it around at the back and Nat Phillips, a player who has never ever in his life been suited to knocking it around at the back, takes his eye off it and does some sort of standing-foot shuffle skill move, like someone is spamming buttons on the PlayStation and Armstrong, who has pressed with no expectation of winning the ball, does just that, takes it up to the keeper and calmly slides it past him for two.

West Brom don’t actually look too bad when they are attacking and Karlan Grant is causing Fellows a few problems down our right and he cuts in and aims a curler at the back post which is well shepherded out by Ryan Manning. It’s a reminder that they’re not dead yet however.

Meanwhile, West Brom‘s play in their own half is still shit and a shanked clearance goes to THB who manages to split the lines with the past forward to Azaz, who takes it on the back foot which takes him away from Diakite and he slides it through to Armstrong, who buries it at the far post. Absolutely superb finish by Arma. it’s at this point that I remember that he was on loan at West Brom last year and didn’t do very much what with him and Fellows and their own team and Ryan Mason, West Brom fans are having a great time.

Mason confirms that by dragging some pork bugger off after 35 minutes and making his first substitution. The guy coming off does not look happy about being the scapegoat.

Half time and it really has been a piece of piss so far and it’s time to see if we can produce a second half performance and maybe give those goal starved Northam Wall dwellers a goal to cheer.

The second half starts at a slower pace as you’d expect, but we are managing things quite well until West Brom get a free kick in the middle of the park which leads to them winning a corner. In it comes from our left, headed out and Grant pick us up the ball on the edge of the box and it’s far too easy for him to work it onto his left foot and drill it diagonally past Baz into the far corner. It’s another one of those ones where you’re looking at the goalkeeper and thinking it’s not a horrific mistake but a decent keeper gets at least a hand on that.

Tonda takes it as time to make the subs that he had ready anyway, with Scienza and Fellows being replaced with Archer and Wee Man. The drop off is huge and straight away, with West Brom back on the attack again and there’s a free header in the box which is straight at the goalkeeper, thankfully.

Armstrong has moved out to the left before being replaced with Robinson, but the direction of the game is completely changed now and it’s a case of whether or not we can defend the set pieces. Illing-Junior swings in the corner from our left which goes into a crowd of bodies and hits Baz and goes out for another corner, though he doesn’t know much about it. In comes the corner again, another header won by the baggies and a combination of Manning and Baz get that one away.

West Brom have brought on Mikey Johnston, probably to take these corners from our right and he’s swinging them in along the 6 yard line and we are panicking like motherfuckers. In comes one, curlicg in, a flick and a panic and wide for another corner. Same again, a West Brom head and Baz has to help that one on its way over the bar. And another and Phillips gets up all of 4 yards out to nod the ball in the net with Baz absolutely nowhere. Now we’ve got a problem and there are five plus extras to go.

Everyone has been calling for Romeu to come on and he does but as with the Birmingham game, Aribo comes on as well with Azaz and Jander making way. The tiny West Brom contingent get excited again as Johnston causes havoc down our right with a low cross that sees two West Brom players step over it, Wood tries to flick it away and misses it and Josh Q nutmegs himself and Illing-Junior is totally free at the back post and we all close our eyes and wait for the net to bulge…. but he places it wide. Up their end of the pitch we go and that’s it.

Thanks fuck that’s over and thank fuck we hung on. The second half was probably the worst half of football we’ve put in this season and it was right back so the Will Still days with no tempo, no desire to go forward and no risks taken. On top of that, we let in dodgy set piece goals because we weren’t decisive enough with our defending and because we invited pressure on ourselves.

The opening fifteen minutes of the second half was bad enough with the team that started but we have a bit of a problem now. Earlier on in the season, when Will Still was the manager, I remember saying that it virtually didn’t matter what XI you put on the pitch from our squad because they were all roughly the same in terms of ability. That was true with the way we were playing back at the start of the season, but it’s not true now because the first choice XI has gone to a much higher level and the reserveds have been left behind, so there is a massive drop off when we make changes. If you look at the replacements that usually come on, you are replacing Scienza with Robinson – massive drop off, Azaz with Aribo – colossal drop off, Fellows with Fraser – colossal drop off, Armstrong with Archer -canyon sized drop off.

On top of that we had Josh Q replacing Stephens today and that was a massive downgrade as well. It occurred to me when we were under the cosh in the second half and defending all those corners that Josh Q never gets his head to anything, despite being 6 foot 5, and he very rarely uses his pace because he doesn’t know when to use it. That’s his two main attributes that he barely uses. How can you be 6 foot 5 and never win header? If he’s not going to be dominant in the air then he should not be anywhere near the pitch. Captain Jack is better in the air than him, so is Ronnie Edwards and I also think Oriol Romeo would be a better left sided centre back than him. He’s not alone – Nathan Wood should win more than he does as well.

Our defending of corners in the second half when Mikey Johnston was swinging them in from the left, was so panicky and lacking decisive defending. The goalkeeper issue was back with avengeance – Baz made a couple of reaction saves but he’s basically flapping around like a budgie and the ball either hits him or not. We need the goalkeeper to be coming out and catching it or punching it, but however he chooses to deal with it, he has to have more presence and be more dominant. There may well have been a foul on the second goal, but he was absolutely nowhere. That impacts the defenders who naturally drop deeper because they don;t trust him and that causes issues as well. The bottom line is that between them, we didn’t get the first touch to any of those corners. We have three massive central defenders who are all playing zonally, so the idea is that they attack the ball when it comes into their zone but all of those crosses from Johnston were on the 6 yard line and that’s the keepers ball.

However, when all is said and done, it’s the perfect result because we have still come away with three points and we have had a massive wake up call and no one can be under illusions that that second half was acceptable if you want to be challenging for promotion .

Now that’s got all the negative shit out the way, let’s talk about the first half, in which we were absolutely fucking magnificent again, helped by West Brom and their shit tactics and mistakes at the back but you have to be good enough to take advantage and take advantage we did. The front three of Scienza, Armstrong and Azaz were all magnificent again, with Tom Fellows tearing his old employers a new one for the first goal which was finished off by Scienza and the new seemingly AI generated Adam Armstrong, continuing this ridiculous run of form he is on with another two goals which make him as it stands, the leading scorer in the Championship this season. He’s always scored goals at this level but the difference now is that the all-round play is exceptional. The finish for the third goal was absolute class, having taken the pass from Azaz and his first goal was down to recognising that Nat Phillips can be a bit of a donkey and getting his foot in and then calmly finishing.

The midfield of Flynn Downes and Casper Jander broke everything up and the passing was crisp and forward and the link into the attackers via either Fellows or Azaz or Manning or the two central midfielders was exceptional. There is real pressure on these two to stay fit and keep performing with Romeu and the soon to be returning Shea Charles waiting in the wings. Fair play to Ryan Manning today who put in a better defensive shift, probably down to Welington being on the bench and some no doubt choice words after Saturday.

I started this off by talking about Ryan Mason and how he didn’t really have the CV to warrant getting a job as good as the West Brom one and the Baggies fans seem to agree. The players didn’t do him any favours in the first half, which is of course where they lost the game and you shouldn’t get much credit for making a sub before half-time and putting in a bit of performance in the second half when the team you picked to start the game and the way they set up, sees you 3-0 down at half-time. Mason has a lack of experience and is struggling to dig his way out of this hole that West Brom have got into in away games. With Will Still, a lot of the problem was the application and effort put in by the players but the West Brom players are still playing for the manager, as borne out by the second half performance. Based on what I saw yesterday, those players can probably do it if you a) pick the right ones, b) set them up properly and c) motivate them properly. The irony is of course, that Saints have appointed a manager with even less experience than Mason and he has won six games out of seven. It is a gamble but it’s a gamble that is paying off at the moment. West Brom’s gamble on an inexperienced young manager doesn’t look like it’s going to go the same way.

EIEIEIO up to 8th in the league we go and up to Carrow Road we go on Saturday to play a struggling Norwich team who got a decent point on the road at Sheffield United today. Maybe they are turning the corner a little bit, but regardless, they are one of only two teams worse than Portsmouth this season and it should be another case of taking care of business and three points.