'Out of Control'. Feb 2026.

‘Out of Control’.  

‘I was of the feeling it was out of control

I had the opinion it was out of control’        Bono. 1979.

We’ve all been in situations where control is compromised.

And often you are in the middle of it, realizing what is going on, but immune from activating the changes needed…

I was a teacher for 35 years, and still look back to some of my early days and grimace..

You are there, but you are not there..

Looking back, it can be down to, lack of planning, the wrong person in charge, or letting the inmates run the asylum, as they say…

Or, as ever in life, a mixture of all three…

As a Baggies fan, watching the freefall unveil its ugly but seemingly inevitable head, it seems the one quality we have in such short supply is control..

Whenever have I seen a West Brom team of recent vintage, control a game, let alone dictate a narrative?

Rather than arrest a decline, it’s got simply worse and worse…

Decline is of course multi layered and is seemingly accelerated through mismanagement and myopic planning..

Look at The Championship now and the teams in absolute freefall?

There are four.

Four proud, provincial teams with storied histories, connected through recent tawdry times, poor ownership and direction based on throwing darts at issues rather than throwing light on the clarity of vision required, seems to have united us.

But there is not one united in this seemingly doomed quartet of decline..

There’s a Wednesday, a Rovers, a City and an Albion…

That’s where we are…

And the possible lifeline for us, of one team's points deduction with a strong possibility of another, seems to be our most possible route to survival.

And then finish above one.

Control is a quality you need off and on the pitch, a unity of purpose and a unity of vision..

In recent times, it was there, under the baton of the ‘not so fat’ controller himself, Carlos Corberan..

With Carlos, the first impression of a banishment of a static, sideline presence to a whirling dervish of  manic movement, seemed at the time, exactly what we needed.

The Albion’s Media team were very smart to display and publish visuals of classic Corbearnisms in his first training session..

But this wasn’t an impression…

This was a necessity..

Corberan never betrayed his manner of involved, controlled management and you wonder why?

The evidence post Corberan is damning..

Being a caretaker manager at Xmas, with such little time to impact or prepare, was a tough ask for Chris Brunt, but away to a struggling Derby team on Boxing Day 2024, regardless of The Rams seemingly being an unbeatable nemesis, I think all of us fans, fancied a rare away win at The Rams that day?.

The prize was a position in a playoff spot..

Of course, we all know, the Albion laid a proverbial Boxing Day egg, never looking like winning, but look at the prize then and compare the subsequent timeline..

13 months and one week…

Verge of the Playoffs…

Now, the verge of a relegation spot..

It may happen two hours from publishing this, if Blackburn defeat the Division One bound Owls.

A drop off of fifteen places, more than a place per calendar month, in a division that is arguably weaker than it has been since we were relegated from The Premier League 1,727 days ago..

Of course, with financial issues abounding and a tightrope of FFP rules needed astriding and when you sell your best and fill the gaps with less, it was always going to be a tricky season..

But the rebuilding was clearly stymied in a lack of balance.

One striker signed, Aune Heggebo, [compromised with high balls fired at him, no wonder his impact has lessened], to supplement one long term and seemingly weakened player in Maja and another who is consistently overlooked in Dike.

A series of centre halves signings, some proven but possibly aging Championship defenders, with a couple of caveats.

They MUST all be right footed.

They must all lack pace..

No need for a specialist full back, so it seemed in the planning for the season?

Injuries of course have not helped.

Toby Collyer would have been the ideal signing to add much needed quality to midfield, but of course plagued by various ailments, his twelve games flirtation of his qualities that lasted just over four hours of first team action and resulted in a recall to Man Utd and now out on loan again with the promotion chasing Tigers of Hull.

Ryan Mason’s reign, looking back, was pretty similar to his demeanour, uninspired, but seemingly set for a future in the lower echelons of The Championship..

At least for this year.

Mason’s team had a modicum of organization, hamstrung by signings that on the whole lacked balance and underachieved, but there was a structure that seemed to work for home matches, his foibles being an away streak that showed no sign of being addressed.

The football at times, particularly with Mikey Johnston marauding down the right side and supplying a rampant and unleashed Aune Heggebo in his hot spell of six goals in rapid succession, in small windows, created a sense of hope.

Good players, playing in their correct positions..

Go figure?

Of course, Mason made errors, his reading of the game and use of the bench was tepid and ineffective, but we were mostly never out of control, and certainly competitive in games..

Here’s where the dislocation looks to have taken place, Andrew Nestor feeding his vision of football with a mixed bag of signings, some huge successes, others absolute bombs, [we all know the names]..

But there seemed to be a plan and we were mostly competitive..

It’s funny how the grass being greener can apply in any situation, and the Mason days, taken in isolation look like a mirage of hope with what has gone on in recent weeks..

The fact Nestor was nowhere to be seen on the unveiling of our new boss, Eric Ramsay, was maybe just a coincidence, but you never know in football?

Ramsay has a good reputation in the MLS, and is the latest incarnate to try and break through the managerial threshold of success, a pathway too far for another coach viewed as a forward thinking coach here in the US, Wilfried Nancy.

On the playing side, the pathway to respect and acceptance wasn’t easy originally for American soccer players, back in the very early 1990’s, and as I’m good friends with many of them, I know how tough that journey truly was.

Of course, those days are long gone and for Eric Ramsay, the earliest in game impressions were to be so vital in acceptance from the home base of fans already in the earliest sense of panic to the netherland of a place we probably never thought we’d see The Albion competing in?

The third tier of English football..

At Minnesota Utd, Ramsay took over a struggling team from Adrian Heath and turned things around fairly quickly.

One of my MLS contacts stated Ramsay initially was actually over committing in attack with his early formations, before pragmatism took root, and playing without a majority of the possession, relying on high tempo breakaways and effective set pieces, was his philosophy.

And of course, the much debated three defenders and two wing backs…

To implement this system at The Albion you are firstly radically changing a playing system as well as, I imagine, assuming/misjudging you have the type of players to implement that precise system of play..

It definitely takes a certain type of player to thrive in a back three, and indeed we had the archetypal example of that last year in Torbjorn Heggem..

Very athletic, pacy, comfortable on the ball, reads the game well, consistent in possession..

And left footed..

Again imagine that?

Life mirroring defensive recruitment.

Balance is everything.

The only Albion central defenders who may be comfortable in that Ramsay vision of central defending are Krystian Bielik and George Campbell, and we saw seeds of how this might work against Derby County, in the only mildly convincing spell of Ramsay’s reign so far.

But injuries to those two, and Ramsay STILL deploying the same system, honestly stunned me.

Stability is everything, and we simply opted out.

We opted for out of control..

Add in a young wing back who I imagine barely knew his team mates, with a left wing back who is now heading to Pisa, and a goalkeeper whose one training session was enough to trust him with the gloves for his debut, and as many Bristol City fans warned 'a clanger at a crossed ball', waiting to happen.

It’s a defensive unit, set up in a system of failure.

In an archetypal six pointer.

Those key games that shift momentum on one or another..

After two minutes, you could clearly see Pompey had planned a simple route to navigate our defence, pop a pass in the hole vacated by an attacking wing back and see if our trio of experienced but moribund defenders could actually deal with it.

The predictable answer?

A resounding no.

Whether being pulled apart by runners, or players hurtling into space, or attackers being dragged back by retreating wing backs, receiving yellow cards and subjecting us to dangerous set piece situations.

We were simply torn apart.

Teams can easily plan to play against you if they KNOW exactly what they are going to do.

Exploiting space and weaknesses that are clearly going to be there.

Add in, we can’t effectively chase a game, as to do that you need serial goalscorers, something we simply have not got, so setting a platform and staying in games early is beyond vital.

In our last twelve games we have scored twelve goals.

You concede early, chances are you are not going to win.

Added to that, the caveat of only securing three positive results when falling behind all season, it’s not too obvious to see how teams will want to take the game to us and dictate from there..

Add in, we look so easy to play against, a visit from The Baggies is an invitation to three points.

So the sense of lack of hope and trust in this team is real, one point from the last thirty six available away from home.

A net score of 27 goals to 9, NOT in our favour is obviously a pattern beyond set in stone.

The two worst performances of this away day tour of doom, probably the bookends, both 3-0 defeats to Millwall and obviously last week at Portsmouth.

Millwall was three months ago tomorrow.

4th October.

Looking back, was that the day it was all revealed, that we didn’t have the physicality, athleticism and arguably the fight to compete at the higher end of this division?.

And then you are only going one way..

So the start of February fixtures gives the Albion, its biggest test in decades, as the price of failure is catastrophic, but we are on the flimsiest of foundations.

Does Eric Ramsay continue to adhere to his entrenched system that clearly is at odds with an underperforming and arguably demotivated group, or does he show the ‘flexibility’ he clearly stated he has a coaching tenet and adjust?

Before we are out of games, and the result has long gone?

The reinforcements in the January window are inexpensive, seemingly throws of the dice, from a barely convincing goalkeeper from first impressions, Max O’Leary, a wing back who may have good attacking intentions, but really struggled defensively, [not helped by a one paced back three], Danny Imray and two new attackers.

The return from Aston Villa of our old academy product, Jamaldeen Jimoh-Alboa and Crystal Palace’s muscular teenage striker, Hindolo Mustapha..

Of the four, one is proven with experience, but proving to be hardly a step up from the confidence strewn Josh Griffiths, but will the other three prove to be what we need at this stage of the season?

The loan pool market for us, post Harvey Barnes, has been disastrous, let’s hope for better things here.

Looking at footage, Jimoh-Alboa looks pacy, direct, and is very highly rated by both Villa and more importantly our academy, his re-introduction video to the club he loved as a kid from Handsworth was touching and well intended, [on the theme of videos, it seems the club/Isaac Price missed an important beat, not to release some form of video to apologize for his staring and stand off with the away fans last week?

A simple but sincere message would have hopefully helped bridge a growing chasm between disgruntled fans and players, at the very least it would have helped in PR form.

Our final signing, Hindolo Mustapha has had the strangest of years, loaned to Bundesliga 2 club FC Nurnberg and sank without trace, not one appearance even off the bench.

FC Nurnberg are in mid-table of this division, scoring just over a goal per game, [23 goals in 20 games.

Not once was Mustapha called upon to play?

Looking at footage from playing for Sierra Leone and U21 games at Palace, Mustapha is really what most 19 year old attacking players are.

Raw.

For sure muscular, scorer of some flamboyant goals, but not one appearance in his career so far at first team level?

Ever.

It may work, it may not, but it’s a risk…

Considering the likes of Harry Whitwell and Ollie Bostock, the former in particular, impressive in the FA Cup at Swansea allied in his increasingly occasional cameo league games, it must be beyond disappointing for them?

And us.

Hopefully the 4th Round FA Cup tie v Norwich will give the aforementioned pair, as well as returning from injury, Alex Williams another chance and a platform to impress?

Above all this month, I want to see a team ‘in control’

A team with a stable, workable plan that doesn’t cede advantage from the first minute.

A team with the passion for a fight and the athleticism to match an opponent.

A team that plays it's best players in their best positions.

A team, who we as fans, believe would not only compete, but win games..

A team in control…

Out of control simply means relegation..