What Went Wrong Against Stoke?

The Baggies’ unbeaten start to life back in the Championship came to an end at the Bet 365 Stadium on Friday night.

Previously going a club record 10 games without defeat, the loss at the hands of Stoke City ended the best start to a season West Brom have ever had.

However, although the margin of defeat was fairly sender, on another day lady luck could’ve turned away from Albion‘s favour and lead to a more bruising defeat.

Defensive Difficulties

Beginning the season with 5 Championship quality centre-backs is certainly something not many teams can boast to have had in their armoury.

However, Albion have been left more frail thanks to injuries to first-choice defenders Matt Clarke and Dara O’Shea.

O’Shea‘s impressive rise into the first team was halted after picking up an ankle injury whilst away on international duty with the Republic of Ireland.

Brighton Loanee Matt Clarke made the bench for the game against the Potters, however, boss Valerien Ismael opted to keep the same back three as he went for during Tuesday’s victory against Cardiff City.

This meant that again Conor Townsend would be crammed into the centre-back position yet again, with Kyle Bartley and Semi Ajayi accompanying him in the back three.

This begs the question as to why Ismael continues to ignore the centre-backs on the bench in order to play Townsend outside of his natural position.

Both Kean Bryan and Cedric Kipre have been on the bench since the QPR game, with Bryan making a five-minute cameo late on in that game.

Kean Bryan was signed following his release from Sheffield United, and both Matt Clarke and himself are the only left-footed centre-backs in the squad.

It remains clear that Ismael doesn’t fancy either Kipre or Bryan.

Not playing a natural centre-back in that position comes at the detriment of the side’s balance. Especially down the left-hand side.

Freeing Townsend, and allowing him to get back to his more natural left-wing-back position would mean less space left in behind. Which Stoke exploited very effectively several times throughout the game, and particularly for Nick Powell’s 79th-minute winner.

Having Townsend as a wing-back will eradicate our vulnerability to those balls in behind, and mean the marauding left-back can get back to doing what he does best.

Chasing Shadows

The midfield duo of Alex Mowatt and Jake Livermore has started every game since the beginning of the season, acting as an all-energy double pivot.

In this game we again saw Mowatt and Livermore line up, this time matching up, or attempting to match up against three Stoke City midfielders.

It sounds like a recipe for disaster at first glance and it proved taxing and unrewarding for the midfield pairing.

The Potters' trio of Jordan Thompson, Joe Allen and Mario Vrancic found themselves with constant space to receive and dispatch the ball, always having the spare man in the middle of the park.

This issue could've been prevented by having the front three press the deeper-lying Joe Allen, to prevent him from always being an option when Stoke were in possession.

Having an extra man in midfield could also have solved this problem.

Jayson Molumby came on as a substitute late on in the game, but only as a replacement for Alex Mowatt who left the field due to a possible foot injury.

Molumby has only made three appearances for the Baggies' since signing on loan from Brighton, both being from the bench, it could be argued that the 22-year-old would've been able to add that extra bit of energy to combat Stoke's bypassing three.

Seeing as the front three were fairly ineffective in this particular game, replacing one of them with another midfielder may not have been such a bad move.

However, Ismael's unwillingness to alter his system meant that Stoke continued to skirt through our midfield far too easily.

Wake Up Albion

The constant flurries of Stoke pressure on the Albion goal never seemed to spark a reaction from the side.

When under pressure normally it takes a closely-shaved opportunity to wake up a team, and rile them into some sort of response.

Stoke had several chances throughout the game including a penalty, saved by Sam Johnstone and a disallowed own-goal.

Normally either of those events would cause a team to jump and attempt to pull themselves together, however for Albion that moment of realisation never seemed to come, even after Nick Powell had scored the opener.

The attacking output from the Baggies' was lethargic and below-par to say the least accumulating 0.73 xG overall and creating six chances, half of these being from outside the area.

Albion simply need to get themselves in gear quicker, it took them way too long to react to the opener in the QPR match, and although they won that game, left it incredibly late.

For further analysis and opinion on the Cardiff and Stoke games, be sure to listen to the latest episode of The Baggies Podcast. See below.