Albion’s Second Tier Season Comparison – 44 games

Another commanding victory, this time 3-0 over a pretty abject Watford side, secured another three points for James Morrison’s team that is enough to ensure Championship football for another season. Or is it?

All the official statistics state that Albion are now eight points clear of Oxford United and ten clear of Leicester City, with each of those teams having two games to play. With the EFL saying nothing and the club insisting they are compliant with the PSR regulations, it is only stories from journalists, admittedly well-respected ones, that are keeping Baggies fans from celebrating more vociferously.

But celebrate we should. A nine match unbeaten run taking seventeen points from a possible twenty-seven is impressive for a team in good form, it is nothing short of incredible from the starting point that faced Mozza and his coaching team after the defeat at Oxford United at the end of February.

It is the longest unbeaten run since the twelve matches without defeat under Carlos Corberán in the autumn of 2024, but what is interesting is that those dozen games secured only 16 points, one fewer than the tally Morrison’s team has achieved in three fewer games. For a better unbeaten run, we have to go back to the opening ten games of the 2021/22 season under Valérien Ismaël that yielded 22 points

Furthermore, four successive clean sheets in the league is the longest such run since Megson’s 1-0 specialists recorded six league games without conceding a goal at the beginning of 2002 on their way to promotion to the Premier League. Tony Pulis’s team enjoyed four successive shut-outs in September 2015, but that included a goalless draw with Port Vale in the League Cup, while the club record in all competitions is seven, also in that run in the early days of 2002, but including two FA Cup victories over Leicester City and Cheltenham Town.

The impact made by James Morrison and his team is remarkable, and a clear comparison can be drawn with that made by Carlos Corberán when he first joined the club in the autumn of 2022 and won nine of his first eleven league games. A better points return, to be sure, but while the team were undoubtedly in the doldrums under the stewardship of Steve Bruce, things were not quite as desperate as when Mozza took over.

And while the question as to whether Morrison will be offered the job permanently will not be answered until the end of the season, given Bilkul’s record of appointing head coaches so far, it’s not so much as whether they should take the risk of appointing Mozza, but can they afford to take to risk of not appointing him?

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