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We have no idea how long the current lockdown will last, obviously. However we would be grateful if you could refrain from telling Preview Percy when it does end. Here's his look at the visit of Sam Allardyce's West Bromwich Albion on Tuesday evening...

Next up we play host to West Bromwich Albion. Kick-off on Tuesday evening is 6pm so you’ll need to be ready to turn on BT as soon as the Shipping Forecast finishes. The Eyes up Mother Brown people will be about around 5:30-ish. Some of them won’t have had their tea so they may be tetchier than usual.




So West Brom then. Lots of red highlighter on their results sheet. Leicester, Everton, Southampton, Fulham, Spurs, Man Utd, Palace, Newcastle, Villa, Leeds and Arsenal have all come away from their encounters with the Baggies with three points. They have managed draws with Chelsea Burnley, Brighton and, bizarrely, both Liverpool and Man City whilst their two wins so far have come against Sheffield United (obviously) and, most recently, this weekend away at an out of sorts Wolves where they prevailed 3-2.

This has left them in 19th spot with 11 points from 18 games. They are five points off safety at present, though with a goal difference of -27 compared with Burnley’s -16 effectively makes that a six-point gap with Burnley having a game in hand.

Having limped over the line to get promoted last season the poor start to the season meant the departure of Slaven Bilic was probably inevitable, though the news leaking out immediately after a creditable draw away at Man City might have been viewed as slightly surprising. A more balanced observer might have reasoned that it was more surprising that the P45 hadn’t arrived sooner, particularly when one takes into account the obvious tensions that existed between manager and board at the time. It was very clear that Bilic was dead set against the departure of Egyptian defender Ahmed Hegazi who is currently plying his trade on loan in Saudi Arabia and when you get that sort of divide between a manager and the guys upstairs the final outcome is usually inevitable.

In what was to be his last close season at the Hawthorns, Bilic brought in a number of signings in order to give themselves a fighting chance of staying up, the somewhat faltering nature of their promotion, which was only sorted out on the final day of the season, highlighting the need to bolster the squad. Daisy, the socially distanced support bubbling personal assistant with the beautiful smile informs me that no fewer than seven players arrived during the summer window.

The first of the new arrivals was Brazilian midfielder Mattheus Pereira. The signing was more of an administrative exercise given that he had spent the promotion season at the Hawthorns on loan from Sporting. The loan deal with the Portuguese outfit required the Baggies to make the deal permanent after a set number of appearances, the Baggies shelling out something like £8.6m give or take a few euros on the exchange rate. Pereira was on target twice in the win at Molineux at the weekend, both goals coming from the spot.

The second deal will be one that is all too familiar to you. Grady Diangana had a successful season on loan up there last season so it was no surprise that they might want the player to make things more permanent. However, it seemed likely that the player would play a full part in David Moyes’ squad, especially when you consider how thin it is. It seems that our board had different ideas and the lure of a possible £18m including add-ons proved too much to resist. It is to be hoped that those add-on clauses don’t include a “staying-up” clause then.

The deal caused all sorts of ructions with Mark Noble going into the twittersphere to declare himself “gutted, angry and sad” (coincidentally the nicknames of the participants in Tuesday’s Eyes up Mother Brown) about the deal. Meanwhile, in his infamous radio interview with Jim White, Mr Sullivan claimed the deal was good business not least because we already had seven wingers, before promptly going out to purchase another. Diangana is unlikely to feature having picked up a hamstring strain. Meanwhile we understand Jim White has just about recovered from his bout of Cherry Blossom poisoning and Mr Sullivan’s boots won’t require a polish for a good few months yet.




The arrival of central defender Cedric Kipre was almost a mirror image of the Hegazi deal, the player having arrived from Wigan with little or no input from Bilic. Bilic’s actions spoke louder than words and the player has but three appearances to his name this season – in the League and FA Cups. Whether or not the player can impress Allardyce is questionable and, at the time of writing, Blackburn are sniffing around having lost out to West Brom for the player’s signature in the summer.

The absence of regular custodian Sam Johnstone on Covid quarantine at the weekend meant a league debut on Saturday for summer arrival David Button. A £1m arrival from Brighton, he had only featured in the cups up to that point. West Brom is the 18th different club Button has appeared for since turning pro in 2008 with him having been continually farmed out on loan whilst on Spurs’ books.

Callum Robinson was another who spent time on loan with the Throstles last season. He originally signed on last January until the end of the season, the deal becoming permanent with Ollie Burke going the other way to Sheffield United. Veteran full-back Branoslav Ivanovic is best remembered for his nine years at Chelsea, who he left for Zenit St Petersburg in 2017. He’s arrived on a one-year deal which does rather smack of “one last payday”.

Ivanovic is a player that weird and wonderful things happen to. He was one of a number of players of whom Luis Suarez has attempted to make a nourishing meal, the obnoxious Uruguayan picking up a 10 match ban with the FA deciding that even if cannibalism isn’t expressly mentioned in the laws of the game, on balance it should be considered a bit unsporting, even if the diner is wearing a Liverpool shirt. Then last year Ivanovic picked up managed to drop the Russian Super Cup, an embarrassing enough thing to do at the best of times, but doubly so when the trophy in question is made of cut glass. Clearly the Ivans didn’t think that one through.

Of course, unusually this season we are playing a team for the first time with them having faced two transfer windows – or part thereof. Alladyce’s appointment just before Christmas has at least given him a full window to deal with. The most prominent signing this winter has been dear old Robert Snodgrass who left a couple of weeks back. As mentioned last week he carried himself with no little degree of dignity given the lousy comments made about him by members of our board and he also did a lot of unheralded work on the charity front. Obviously, I hope he has a thoroughly lousy night this Tuesday but I sure as well won’t be too upset if he picks up a totally pointless consolation goal celebrated with a run to the touchline with a suitable hand signal in the direction of our ever-growing board of directors.

Enough of them. Let’s have a look at the Wild and Wacky World of Association Football. Not much to report really. It’s kind of a football silly season at the moment with the major headlines concentrating on whether or not players should be hugging in goal celebrations. It’s a conundrum to be sure – there’s the natural release one gets as the ball hits the back of the net of course but the greater good needs to be considered as well. It is heartening therefore to see that arch innovator Jurgen Klopp leading the way with Liverpool avoiding the problem altogether by failing to score in their last four games. How very public spirited.

Talking of goal celebrations brings us nicely onto us, Antonio’s backstroke apparently being the result of his losing a bet with Declan Rice over a video game. The game itself was pretty much sorted to our game plan really. At the moment we are much better playing on the counter and the worry was that Burnley might want to defend deep and make things difficult.




For us. Antonio’s early goal changed the dynamic of the game so that simply sitting back wasn’t an option for the visitors, who weren’t very good coming forward. Of course one should point out that this was partly because they weren’t allowed to be. Many was the attacking move that foundered on the twin rocks of Rice and Soucek whilst crosses from the deep were dealt with splendidly by Ogbonna and Dawson who, in four games, have done as much to prevent opposition strikers from indulging in unhealthy goal celebrations as Liverpool have done on their own account.

Antonio was back to his best giving Mee and Tarkowski a torrid time and always providing a willing outlet from defence or midfield. The much-debated Benrahma had a decent runout – still one or two blips on the decision-making front perhaps but he put in a fair bit of hard work off the ball and could consider himself a little unlucky to be replaced by Lanzini perhaps.

We’re down to two on the infirmary inventory. Arthur is a good couple of months away from a return whilst Balbuena has a week or so left of Covid isolation to consider, having been in contact with someone who tested positive.

Nothing to report at present on the transfer front, which means that we are one hamstring away from being without a recognized first XI striker. Incidentally, one can’t help but notice that Mipo Odubeko’s credentials are being bigged-up by the club and its mouthpieces, both official and otherwise. Now if the lad is one tenth of how good some observers are saying then he will be very good indeed. However, one hopes that the powers that be aren’t putting undue pressure on the player simply because they need to be “softening-up” supporters with some form of good news in lieu of a more experienced player arriving at the club. Remember the lad has had his own injury issues this season so let’s not lay everything on his shoulders and let him develop at a natural pace shall we.

So prediction then. Well I see this one going in similar vein to the Burnley match. We all know how “Mr Respect The Point” likes his sides to play and that would involve us being forced to break them down. They will be buoyed by their win in the Black Country derby (a term that the broadcaster felt compelled to explain lest offence be caused). However, that should be put into some form of context.

I wasn’t convinced that their first penalty actually occurred in the box – something that seemed to be an elephant in the punditry room and merely highlighted the complete pointlessness of hiring Peter Walton to comment on refereeing decisions. They might as well stick a recording of him on there saying “yes the ref” was right and alternate it with one of him saying “he was right to change his mind” whenever VAR proves the contrary. Secondly Wolves are not at the races at the moment and if ever there were a good time to face them in a derby Saturday was it.

I think an early goal will settle us and a fit Antonio will be looking forward to facing a defence that has let in five to the likes of Palace, Everton and Leeds this season. I don’t think they will be as difficult to break down as Burnley might have been. So the £2.50 I was going to spend on a set of water wings to enable Antonio to perfect his goal celebration will be wagered on another home win. Let’s be more optimistic than usual and engage Mr Winstone with a wager on a 3-1 home win.

Enjoy the game!




When last we met at the Olympic: Lost 0-1 (FA Cup 4th round January 2020)
At the time I described the first 45 minutes as being one of the worst I’d ever seen. In retrospect I was wrong. I should have said the 90 minutes were one of the worst I had seen. Townsend’s 9th minute effort was all that was required to knock us out of the cup. West Brom could have walked off at that point and Balbuena would still have found a way to give the ball away to them – it got to the stage where there were ironic cheers on the rare occasions he found a team-mate. Even the dismissal of Ajayi with 18 minutes left didn’t help as we were left in time-honoured style to “concentrate on the league”.

Referee: Graham Scott
Poor. So poor even PGMOL demoted him. He appealed so they let him stay. Hasn’t improved any since then. Go figure.

Danger Man: Robert Snodgrass
The law of the ex and all that.

.Percy’s Poser
Last time out we had a daft crime slot from the Lancashire Telegraph

Tesco Petrol Station burglar XXXXXXX XX XXXXX to avoid XXXXX XXXXXXX

Well done to Mrs Hilary Thousand-Days of Marks Tay who spotted the missing words as “crawled on floor” and “alarm sensors”. To be fair to the burglar he was partly successful – the alarm sensors didn’t go off – as can be observed in the CCTV footage security were watching as he moved about.

This week we look at a developing scandal from the West Brom local rag the Express & Star:

XXXXXXX displaced after alleged crash

Good luck everyone!

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