View: West Brom must be wary of Birmingham threat that nearly cost them at St. Andrew’s
West Brom will fancy their chances when they come up against Birmingham City on Saturday.
The Baggies are 23 points ahead of their local rivals in the Championship table, and should hopefully be spurred on by the fact that they are closing in on promotion back to the Premier League.
But the Blues won’t be without their threats, and one in particular should be a concern for the Baggies.
Birmingham are dangerous from set-pieces – so much so that they actually scored from a corner against the Baggies in our 3-2 win at St. Andrew’s earlier this season.
Over the course of the last calendar year, Birmingham have averaged a 25.7% shot rate from corners, and a 22.4% shot rate from free kicks, as per Wyscout.
As a point of reference, their opponents have averaged 21.6% and 20.7% in those areas respectively.
That means that the Blues tend to do better than their opponents in the air from dead ball situations, and we saw just that in the reverse fixture.
42.8% of Birmingham’s corners ended up with an effort goal in that match – a vast increase on their usual average.
And, of course, they scored from one too.
As pictured above, the delivery is deep, and for the most part, Albion don’t do a great deal wrong.
But there are two key mistakes that lead to the goal.
Firstly, both defenders abandon their posts too quickly.
Ideally, you want at least one to be guarding that area until the danger is clear, but as you can see above, both have started to wander before the ball has even been attacked.
Secondly, the Albion defender misreads the flight of the delivery.
This means that he is caught under the ball, and Harlee Dean is able to peel off him to give himself a better run at the cross.
If we roll the footage on a bit further, you can see the advantage that gives Dean in the air – and it all stems from ball-watching.
To add insult to injury, the ball then hits the back of the net in the exact spot that the defender would have been had he stayed on his post.
It’s a sloppy goal to concede, no matter which way you look at it.
Thankfully, it didn’t end up costing us on the day – although it did give us all a bit of a scare.
The key now is that Bilic’s men learn from that error, and ensure that we don’t see a repeat of it when the two sides square-off tomorrow afternoon.
In other West Brom news, David Prutton predicts West Brom scoreline v Birmingham City.