Athletic journo discusses possibility of Bilic losing job if West Brom miss out on promotion
The Athletic journalist Steve Madeley has suggested that most West Brom fans would not “entertain” the prospect of sacking Slaven Bilic if they fail to win promotion to the Premier League this season.
The Baggies looked as if they had squandered their advantage in the automatic promotion race this term when they lost to Huddersfield Town on Friday evening.
But Brentford did Albion a massive favour when they lost 1-0 to Stoke City on Saturday lunchtime.
Even if West Brom do slip up again on the final day of the season and subsequently collapse in the play-offs, however, Madeley believes that Bilic will still be secure in his job.
Writing in a piece for The Athletic, he said: “Should the next couple of weeks go badly for Albion, it is difficult to conceive of a summer without more significant change at The Hawthorns.
“That might mean transforming the core group of players that leads the Albion team or it might mean another change in the manager’s office.
“Given the way Bilic has endeared himself to the Albion fanbase and helped build bridges between the club and the stands, the latter is not a prospect many will want to entertain.”
Hopefully, we won’t have to face up to the hypothetical question of whether or not Bilic should keep his job in real life, because Brentford’s loss to Stoke has wrestled control in the promotion race back into our hands just hours after we thought we had lost it for good.
But it certainly is an interesting dilemma.
For the most part, Bilic has turned us into one of the most assured sides in the Championship, but if we were to crumble at the vital moment, it would certainly pose some awkward questions about his leadership.
Still, with the exception of Marcelo Bielsa, you would be hard pushed to name a better manager than the Croatian in this division, and his points per game record of 1.8 is only actually 0.03 worse than the Argentine’s during his spell at Leeds.
Missing out on promotion would be a bitter pill to swallow, but we would have to advocate persevering with Bilic.
In other West Brom news, Adrian Durham has slammed this Albion player after a clip of him went viral on Twitter.
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