Saturday’s opponents West Brom seem to have finally cracked the art of staying in the Premiership, and they’re a much more palatable example to follow than that set by Stoke City.

Overview

There can be few finer things in life than watching Manchester United getting knocked out of a cup competition on their own patch. You can talk about the League Cup not mattering and clubs not being that bothered all you like but Alex Ferguson’s face at the end of Wednesday night’s hilarity told its own glorious story and whether that vile club cares about that cup much or not is largely irrelevant to those of us who rejoice in every small mishap that befalls it. Yes, I am rather looking forward to that lot coming to Loftus Road in a couple of weeks – you’ll have to tie me down with some strong rope if we get anything from that game.

That it was Crystal Palace who beat them only served to add to the joy of it all. A Championship club that has spent years battling relegation to League One amidst a host of financial problems, now starting to make their way again with a bright young manager and a clutch of talented home grown players. It seems that a return to the top flight for Palace may not be the fanciful idea it would have been 12 months ago.

Palace, I’m sure you’ll recall, were the yo-yo club the last time QPR played in the Premier League. The Eagles have been a Premiership club on three separate occasions since the league was formed, with them as founder members, in 1992 and they’ve never once managed to stay for more than a season. They’ve often snatched a relegation from the jaws of salvation – eight points clear with three games left to play in 1991, 2-1 up at Charlton with five minutes left to play before shipping a late goal in 2005 – but they’ve never gone that one step further. Attempts have become fewer and further between for the Eagles in recent times and the title of yo-yo side of the last decade has been transferred to our opponents this Saturday West Brom.

The Baggies have successfully survived once before, defying the received wisdom that the team sitting bottom at Christmas is always relegated to pull off their version of “the great escape” in 2005 with a young Kieron Richardson to the fore on loan from Manchester United. Unbelievably that unlikely escape was masterminded by one of the worst football managers of the modern era Bryan Robson, but he quickly reverted to type the following season and did to Albion what he’s done to every other club he’s been in charge of before or since – relegated them. (Note – Sheffield United would have been relegated, had they not sacked the useless, sour faced, drunken idiot two thirds of the way through his first season in charge.)

West Brom’s chairman Jeremy Peace has been remorselessly sensible over the past ten years, since the appointment of Gary Megson in 2000 turned a club that seemed to be perennially staring the Second Division in the face into one that was upwardly mobile. Promotion has never been followed by an outlandish spending spree in the Sunderland style, which means that although relegation has been more likely than it might have been had they invested in players they haven’t been lumbered with a group of unhappy, high earning, under performing players on their return to the second tier – turn to the Leeds, Nottingham Forest, Southampton, QPR, Bradford and Norwich pages in your text books for reference to how that usually turns out.

They haven’t been afraid to spend some money when the right player comes along though. Shane Long’s transfer fee this summer isn’t altogether clear but stats bible Soccerbase lists it at £6.5m. They spent the thick end of £15m on seven players in the summer prior to 2008/09 and Chris Brunt cost them £3m as a Championship club in 2007/08. But they always look for players who aren’t going to demand the excessive wages commanded by the likes of Joey Barton and Shaun Wright Phillips who QPR have invested their hopes and cash in, and players that will stay with the club and promote it again should the worst case scenario happen. Every singing seems like a long term bet in other words, there aren’t many 30+ year olds arriving here on excessive deals.

In 2008/09 they seemed to have an excellent chance of staying in the Premiership. They’d won the Championship at a canter (picking the trophy up at Loftus Road on the last day as everybody seems to do these days) playing superb football under Tony Mowbray, but upon promotion they found that quite a few Premiership teams play superb football as well and they were comfortably relegated after one year. Mowbray was not sacked despite the troubles, although he did decamp for an unhappy spell at Celtic at the end of the season. Peace, a former investment banker, extorted a fee in the region of £2m from the Bhoys for his manager and his contract policy has seen them run off laughing to the bank on several other occasions as well - £10m for Curtis Davies from Aston Villa and £6m from Fulham for Diomansy Kamara particularly ridiculous examples but there are others.

All in all it seems a sensible, worthy way of going about things - which is why the decision to sack Roberto Di Matteo in the middle of last season seemed not only harsh but also completely out of character. Di Matteo, like Mowbray, had promoted Albion in his first full season in charge to great acclaim for the style of the team. Unlike Mowbray he’d actually made a decent fist of the Premiership to begin with and although results had turned sour (one win from ten matches) they were still just above the bottom three when his swift dismissal in February this year came and it all seemed very un-West Brom like.

Perhaps though Peace had decided that his club could only yo-yo for so long. The experienced Roy Hodgson was available after his unhappy Liverpool experience and it seemed like an excellent fit – it has in fact proved to be more than that. The Baggies finished eleventh last season and few pundits mentioned them in any pre-season predictions of teams that should beware of the trap door this term. Hodgson seems to have given them that final shove into the magical world of consolidated Premiership football – the problem now, with the England job about to become available, could be keeping or replacing him successfully.

Interview

LoftforWords’ man for all things West Brom is Hawthorns regular and former team mate of yours truly Dr Matthew Graham. That’s right, Dr. This means we’re in the rare position of having somebody vaguely intelligent commenting on LFW so prepare for long words and common sense as Dr Matt kindly takes time out of his schedule to give us an overview of life at West Brom just now.

What have you made of the Baggies' start to the season?

I think it has been a solid and satisfactory start to the season so far for the Albion. I am quite happy to be honest, as we are sitting in fourteenth going into this weekend’s fixture - we have put in some exceptional performances against the likes of Wolves and Manchester United and have now played most of the league’s best teams once. We were slightly unlucky with the fixture list, as we opened with Manchester United, Chelsea, and our bogey team Stoke. It meant that despite playing really well in all three matches we didn’t register a point until mid-September. I must say we were quite unlucky: Ashley Young’s winner for Man Utd took two deflections on its way in and Stoke scored in the last minute. However, as a smaller club we have to be taking points off the teams around us and, apart from an abysmal showing against Swansea, we have been rather successful at doing that - beating Wolves, Aston Villa, Bolton and Norwich. With fixtures against QPR, Blackburn and Wigan all in December, I am confident that we will be able to improve on our position by the New Year.

What are the hopes and ambitions for this season and beyond? Is it just about staying up and beating Wolves or is there more to it than that? What constitutes a successful season?

I think the first priority for any team our size is ultimately staying up, and I think any supporter who says differently is kidding themselves. However, realistically, most Albion supporters expect us to be around mid-table (ninth to thirteenth) come May. We did really well finishing eleventh last season, and we don’t really want to be regressing and getting sucked back into a relegation battle, especially as we have improved our squad. I think in the future we might be able to emulate a team like Fulham and get a shot at Europe, but that is probably a few seasons off. Obviously beating Wolves and Villa are important to many supporters for local bragging rights, and those results have been the highlights of this season so far. I would love to see us have a run in the FA Cup, as we got to the semi-finals a few years ago under Tony Mowbray, but I can’t see that happening as the league has become our key priority now. Therefore, and it pains me to says this, that a successful season constitutes mid-table mediocrity, beating and coming above our Midlands rivals, and maybe getting a bonus result against one of the big teams.

How has Shane Long settled into Premiership life? A number of QPR fans were very keen on us signing him in the summer.

Shane Long has been a revelation. He has adapted to life in the Premiership very well, and has added an extra dimension to our forward line. His commitment and work rate is admirable, as he chases lost causes and puts defenders under a lot of pressure. With the ball at his feet Long is exceptionally quick, has already scored a number of goals and for someone of his stature has an impressive leap on him – take for instance his headed goal against Bolton two weekends ago. The only question mark might be his ability to play in a partnership with Odemwinge, because in the few games they have played together, they have been disappointing. After his injury against Villa (Hutton’s horror tackle) Long was sorely missed, which underlines his importance to the team already. I think QPR missed out on absolute bargain this summer.

What do you make of your manager who obviously had a bad time at Liverpool but seems to have done a good job with you guys?

Roy Hodgson has been brilliant for us. He saved us from almost certain relegation last season after Roberto Di Matteo got sacked (a bold decision by our chairman), and somehow managed to drag the team into the safety of mid-table. Hodgson is perfectly suited to a team of our stature; there is relatively little pressure on him, we are a club moving in the right direction, and he has been able to coach the team into a well drilled and extremely organised outfit without losing too much of our flair. He is also a big draw for potential signings, and both Long and Gera said that he was a key factor in their decisions to join the Albion. There was a heated debate in the press and amongst fans earlier in the season about his insistence on playing 4-4-2 (in order to fit both Long and Odemwinge into the team), instead of the successful 4-5-1 formation we employed last term. However, as results have improved, this has gone quiet. The only question mark is Hodgson’s publicly stated desire to become the England manager, which means he could be on his way in the summer. Hopefully he won’t be given it, as I can’t see us replacing him with a similarly high-profile manager.

As a fan of a serial yo-yo team, what do you think clubs like QPR and WBA need to do to stay up and consolidate? It seems you guys might have cracked it now.

I think that our chairman, who has been lambasted by many Albion supporters in the past, is a key factor behind our success. We live within our means and we are set up each season with relegation as a very real possibility. It means that we haven’t splashed all our cash on over paid mercenaries the moment we got promoted, but rather invested smaller sums in up and coming young players, upgraded our training facilities and academy, avoided older players on big wages and tied all our players to long contracts, with clauses reducing their salaries massively if we get relegated. The upshot is that if we get relegated then we have a decent squad to get us almost certainly promoted again, and if players do want to leave, due to their long contracts, we can extort as much money as possible from the buyer (£10m for Curtis Davies and £6m for Diomansy Kamara spring immediately to mind). Finally, after several experiments of how to approach the Premiership, we may finally have settled on the right blend of defence and attack. The thing is to keep on improving on the players we already have and as a supporter to be realistic about our chances each season. We are never going to win the Premiership, but perhaps, operating in the way we have done, we might be able to win a cup or get into Europe. One thing is for certain, we won’t be going bankrupt anytime soon.

Who is the star man, the unsung hero and the weak link in your line up?

On his day, Chris Brunt is still our best player. He possesses a lethal left foot, scores some important goals, has a decent cross on him, and can unlock defences with some surprisingly deft passing. However, this season he hasn’t quite reached the levels that would be expected of him, but maybe that says a lot about how good he has been in the past.

For the unsung hero I was going to plump for Somen Tychoi our exciting, yet enigmatic Cameroonian, but because he doesn’t play very often I am going for our midfield enforcer Youssef Mulumbu. He is the engine of our team, and when he isn’t playing well, the team often suffers. He breaks up attacks well, shields our defence effectively, gets our own team moving forward and chips in with a number of goals. He was schooled by Claude Makalele at PSG, and this legends influence on his game certainly tells. Thankfully we secured him on a long term contract this summer, as big teams like Fiorentina were rumoured to be interested in signing him.

The weak link is unfortunately Steven Reid. I love this guy as a player, with his all-action displays and tough tackling. However, he has a woeful lack of pace, which often leaves us exposed on the right hand side of defence. He is also prone to giving away needless free kicks around the penalty area, which we haven’t been particularly great at defending.

Manager

It’s getting to the stage now where it’s easier to say which teams Roy Hodgson hasn’t managed than list the ones he has. He’s on 18 clubs and three countries now and shows no signs of either slowing down, or losing his ability to drill a side remorselessly into achievement.

Hodgson has been coaching since 1971 but after initial spells with Maidstone and Carshalton his time was spent almost exclusively on foreign soils through until 2007. He is extremely well regarded in Sweden where he took perennial relegation strugglers Halmstad and turned them into two time league champions, and Malmo with whom he won the league five years in a row, the subsequent end of year play off twice and the Swedish Cup twice as well. As the Swiss national manager he qualified easily for USA 94 from a group containing Portugal and Italy and made the last 16 in the States, he also qualified them automatically for Euro 96 but left before the tournament to take over at Inter Milan.

Inter have been throwing money at Italian football for years under the ownership of Massimo Moratti without ever winning anything until their main rivals were all found guilty of bribing referees and docked points and Roberto Mancini took over. Prior to that Hodgson built a team that won the UEFA Cup in 1997, their only prize of the early Moratti years, but left before they reached the final.

Despite all of this, opportunities in England were few and far between. A brief and unsuccessful spell with cash strapped Bristol City in the 1980s was about it until 1997 when Blackburn came calling for his services. Former title winners in decline, Hodgson initially arrested Rovers’ descent by finishing sixth in the Premiership and qualifying for Europe but was then sacked three months into the following season with the club bottom of the league. He’d have to wait almost another ten years before a team in his homeland took a chance on him again.

In the meantime he won the Danish league with Copenhagen, endured an unhappy four months at Udinese, spent time as caretaker manager back at Inter and had a season with Grasshoppers in Zurich. He then coached the United Arab Emirates, a spell he sums up as follows: "That was a period where I didn't know where my career was going. But all these experiences enrich you and it was good to know I could get my message to players who many say are uncoachable. It's hard work; they're basically lazy. But I had them drilled and pressuring opponents almost like an English team. Most coaches who go there are just fannying around, but it's not my nature.”

He managed Finland but couldn’t qualify them for a tournament for the first time in their history and was linked with the England job on more than one occasion before finally getting a second crack at the Premiership in 2007 with Fulham. That seemed like a lost cause to begin with, the damage done by Lawrie Sanchez’s ludicrous belief that reassembling his Northern Ireland side at club level would be enough to compete in the Premiership seemed terminal but Hodgson pulled off an unlikely escape that included rare away wins at Man City and Portsmouth as part of a 12 point haul from the final five matches that rescued them. He went on to lead Fulham first into Europe, and then through a marathon run in the Europa League to a final with Athletico Madrid which they lost in extra time.

West Brom picked him up midway through last season and he lead them to comfortable safety before reshaping the side this summer.

This is, clearly, a very good CV. He’s experienced football management through four decades and in eight different countries. He’s managed national sides on three occasions, achieving more than was expected in each appointment. He’s English, his teams play a simplistic but nonetheless attractive football and he has succeeded in the Premiership twice recently with two of its more unfashionable members. This is a man who shouldn’t be much more than evens when the England job becomes available at the end of this season – especially given the favourite Harry Redknapp’s legal and health problems.

And yet, support is thin on the ground for him to succeed Fabio Capello. Hodgson still has the Blackburn Rovers spell held against him in some quarters, but more pressingly his as yet unmentioned abject failure with Liverpool last season seems to be undermining the excellent work done in the other 20-odd jobs he’s held since 1971. Never mind that Liverpool was being run into the ground by a pair of clueless American clowns or that Hodgson was left to pick up the pieces of a squad assembled by Rafael Benitez who, in his latter days on Merseyside, operated in the transfer market like somebody who’d never seen a game of football before drawing random names and transfer fees out of a hat while under the influence of bootleg Vodka – how many £7m Spanish left backs can one team possibly need? No, Liverpool are massive and terribly important, and Hodgson was rubbish. Apparently. Whisper it quietly, but despite spending the thick end of £100m on players in less than 12 months King Kenny Dalglish has done little better since taking over from him.

For me the fear I would have of making Hodgson the England manager is, strangely, what his Fulham players said about him. He was magnificent at the Cottage, saving a dead and buried team and building them into Europa League finalists. But the players there spoke of having to buy into his philosophy 100% for it all to come together – his initial results at Fulham were very poor with just nine points won from his first 13 league games and an FA Cup defeat by Bristol Rovers. Danny Murphy, when times were good, described monotonous training sessions built entirely around repetitive drilling of shape and pattern of play. The Fulham players, who achieved more than anybody ever thought possible under Hodgson, spent quite a lot of their time bored. It worked, but they didn’t really seem to know how or why it worked.

At Liverpool, as well as the ludicrous boardroom situation and horribly unbalanced squad, there were egos – egos don’t like standing out in the rain for long periods of time being put through the same simplistic pattern of play drill time after time after time. Sadly for Hodgson the England squad would win World Cups for the rest of time if the prize were handed out for ego. Is Hodgson going to find a group of players in that England squad happy to buy into his philosophy and monotonous drilling? H didn’t at Liverpool.

He’s found groups of players happy to do it all over the world but wherever he has been successful the same sort of things have applied – never won the league before, perennial under achievers, relegation favourites, never qualified for an international tournament before and so on. Hodgson is a man who gets the best out of underdogs who’ve tried everything else and are therefore willing to try him. England persistently underachieve, but three days being drilled by Roy Hodgson is far more likely to lead to “JT” leading his fucking players’ delegation in revolt yet again than achieve results in my opinion.

I’d go for Redknapp despite a veritable walk-in wardrobe of skeletons ready to haunt him if the FA does take the chance. But that says far more about the tossers that play for our country than it does about Roy Hodgson.

Scout Report

Having billed West Brom as the more palatable Premiership survival model than Stoke to begin with, it’s only fair that I qualify this by starting the scout report with their version of Robert Huth Jonas Olsson. QPR fans only really have happy memories of playing against the giant Swedish centre half – it was he who headed into his own net under heavy duress from Kaspars Gorkss in a 2-2 draw on our last visit to The Hawthorns two seasons ago. But given QPR’s lack of height, and the way they have struggled to contain the likes of Christopher Samba at set pieces this season, it’s highly likely that we’ll be cursing him rather than thanking him this Saturday.

Olsson has only scored once this season and only managed one last term as well, remarkable considering the threat he poses at set pieces, but the damage he does in the opposition penalty area is measured in so much more than goals. Whether attacking or defending a corner or wide set piece Olsson is either fouling or being fouled. He’s never just unmarked or not involved or with his eyes purely focussed on the ball. At Aston Villa earlier this season, against a much bigger and more physical team than we possess, he terrorised both the home side and the referee in what became an ongoing farce that resulted in a ludicrous penalty being awarded in his favour by linesman Darren Cann.

I would say keep an eye on him this Saturday, but given referee’s apparent willingness to let him do what the hell he likes in either penalty area I’d probably advise against it because it will just drive you mad. He loiters around the back post more often than not, and QPR’s centre half play will have to be a whole lot better than it has been in recent games with Blackburn, Man City and Norwich if we’re to cope with him.

Olsson is joined in defence by a couple of signings that I just cannot believe the Baggies ever made. Gareth McAuley is the other centre back, a Northern Irish international who never impressed me as part of a porous Ipswich defence in the division below and somehow earned a move to the Premiership regardless. Likewise Steven Reid whose performances during a brief illfated loan spell with QPR looked like those of a player circling the career drain – it was incredible that West Brom then picked him up and even more remarkable that he’ earned a living for two seasons as a Premiership right back. No surprise to see Dr Matt naming him as the weak link in the side, or to find that they have only kept three clean sheets all season. The first of those shut outs came at Norwich in a 1-0 win in September and was their first in 21 games.

Credit Hodgson though for shipping out the division’s worst goalkeeper Scott Carson at the first possible opportunity and replacing him with Ben Foster who, disgraceful England withdrawal apart, is a keeper with a lot going for him. Carson treated QPR to two goals on the Baggies’ last visit here as the R’s won 3-1 – I can’t see Foster doing likewise this weekend.

That all makes West Brom seem like a rather poor side, and they’re a long way from that. The loss of returning hero Zoltan Gera to a knee injury for the rest of the season is a blow to them but former Paris SG youngster Youssuf Mulumbu is the key man in the Albion midfield by some considerable distance. Picked up for a measly £175,000 in 2009 he is, along with our own Alejandro Faurlin, the outstanding midfield player in the Premiership away from the usual five or six big boys who will no doubt come circling for both sooner rather than later. I’d assume James Morrison will play on one wing with Brunt on the other – a danger with long range shots, and potentially back post headers such as the one he scored at Loftus Road in 2009 given his height – but Hodgson may also throw Somen Tychoi in there.

Tychoi reminds me a bit of Alassane N’Diaye at Crystal Palace in that he doesn’t look or really play much like a professional footballer, doesn’t seem to have a favoured position, and yet is strangely effective. I’ve found him a puzzling watch so far this season and am quite looking forward to a first chance to see him in the flesh this weekend just to try and work out what on earth he’s all about.

The big summer signing was Shane Long from Reading who we have obviously faced numerous times before, but after a great season for the Royals last season which featured a fantastic goal at Loftus Road he seems to have stepped his game up to another level this term. He seems to work harder in a West Brom shirt than he did for Reading, and he’s added a physicality to his game that wasn’t there before. Defenders don’t get a moment of peace and when I saw the second half of the Baggies’ game at Chelsea earlier this season he gave Terry and co a torrid time in the days before everybody gave Terry and co a torrid time.

The only debate really has been whether to play him with last season’s top scorer Peter Odemwingie or instead of him. Odemwingie is another unconventional player – born in Uzbekistan, bought from Spartak Moscow who spent their time mostly racially abusing him, an international with Nigeria – but bagged 15 goals in an impressive Premiership debut season that included a run of six goals in his final eight appearances of the season. Those goals came as the lone striker in a 4-5-1 but Long’s arrival has seen a switch to a 4-4-2 which the Baggies have taken time to settle into. Long is flourishing, Odemwingie less so with only two goals so far.

If West Brom are awarded a penalty on Saturday don’t despair too quickly. Odemwingie has missed two of his last four and Christ Brunt’s effort at Aston Villa earlier this team was so far off target even he couldn’t help but laugh.

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