From last week's Championship notes.......
Sunderland 7.2/10.7, 9-15, 38-56, 12.7, riding their luck defensively, how they have only conceded three goals in their last five will have to remain a mystery!
WBA 6.5/5.2, 6-5, 50-38, 12.2 ,all plus and just look at the xP table, this is not a bottom six, or bottom half team in any way shape or form.
Four columns, they are , in order, xG, BC's, ITB attempts, average (current) league position of the opponent faced. Good numbers in relation to league placing are highlighted in blue type, poor numbers in red.
Expected points (across all games played).
Middlesbrough 41 pts
WBA 41
Sheffield U 37
Burnley 36
Norwich 34
Watford 32
Millwall 29
Swansea 28
Birmingham 28
Luton 28
Stoke 27
Coventry 26
QPR 26
Reading 25
PNE 23
Sunderland 23
Through those last six starts the two clubs have faced a very similar level of opposition, with Albion a net +4.8 xG, +7 BC's and +30 ITB attempts, which fully backs up their xP superiority and despite what the actual table says, there can be few doubts who are the better team and the stand out 3-4 players on the pitch are those I have already highlighted several times in WBA write ups this season. I will , however, just reproduce what I wrote about the new Baggies head coach.....
Steve Bruce has now gone and been replaced by Carlos Corberan who took Huddersfield Town to within a kick or two of the Premier League last season losing narrowly and unluckily in the playoff final to Nottingham Forest, after the Terriers had finished 18th and 20th in the previous two campaigns, a remarkable achievement and turnaround.
The new head coach has overseen four games total , three wins and three clean sheets and will have been able to get all his ideas across in a full month at the training ground. Talking of which, Corberan is said to have had a huge impact on those Walsall training pitches, his work ethic is second to none and he prepares meticulously for every opponent. The four weeks have been planned down to the smallest detail and I understand the board were shocked by how well he was prepared and just what he knew about the squad at his job interview. He had watched all 17 league games and gave a detailed analysis of every squad member, strengths and weaknesses.
The head coach is used to success and knows the Championship well, he led the Leeds U23 team to promotion, was a key member of the Bielsa coaching staff when the first team made it to the EPL and was a few wrong decisions from officials away, from doing the same with Huddersfield in the top job. Anyone who has ever seen him work in training has been impressed and the Albion players have, apparently, been "blown away".
Sunderland did beat Millwall 3-0 nine days ago and that after I had bigged up the Lions, but Millwall bossed the game statistically and dominated the first half (0-0) with the SE London side creating a good 90 minutes worth of offensive numbers in the opening 45, when they should have led by 1-2 goals . They had a poor 4-5 minutes early in the second and the game was lost. If they were to replay that game I would expect a very different outcome.
The still new "boss" gave the Albion website a clear outline of what the schedule has been like for his squad since the full-time whistle blew against Stoke on Saturday, November 12.
Corberán says the three-week period on the training pitches both here in the United Kingdom and out in Spain have been hugely beneficial for so many reasons.
“Immediately after the Stoke game we used that first week to recover. After that, we’ve had three weeks of training work.
“The first and last week were spent here at our training ground and the middle week was spent in Spain.
“We’ve tried to work on developing our ideas during the break and letting the players know how we think we can have the best possible chance of winning more matches.
“We’ve had a couple of training matches too in order to give ourselves the best chance to be match fit ahead of our return to Championship action.
“It’s been a very positive period for us for so many reasons.
“We’ve had such a long period to work on the training pitch which means you can implement so many things on a tactical and a technical level.
“When you play so many games, like we do in the Championship, a lot of the time is spent on recovery and preparing for the next game. You have limited time to coach new ideas and new behaviours.
“We’ve been really focused on working on ideas on the training pitches and I hope we can now take those ideas into game situations.”
Huge game for WBA , three points would take them above six teams and from that point on they can start to look upwards, with 4 of their next 5 starts looking very win-able.
2.25 units West Bromwich Albion -0.25 ball 2.12 asian line.
Good luck!
