Joleon Lescott: 29y/o to return to West Brom starting XI v Fulham
Joleon Lescott claims Kyle Bartley should return to the West Brom starting line-up to face Fulham at The Hawthorns on Saturday.
Bartley, 29, has frustrated a number of Albion fans with his performances in the Premier League this season but the ex-Swansea man was at his best earlier this month in the 3-2 win against Wolves at Molineux.
He didn’t do too much wrong in the 2-1 defeat to West Ham last week either but was dropped from Sam Allardyce’s starting line-up ahead of the 5-0 defeat to Manchester City at The Hawthorns on Tuesday night.
Bartley came off the bench at half-time when Albion were 5-0 down and did play a role in shoring up the leaky back-line.
Ex-West Brom defender Lescott believes that he’ll return to the starting line-up on Saturday when Albion play Fulham in a vital match down at the bottom of the Premier League table.
“They’ll be looking at those games hoping they can pick up points and it needs to start at the weekend against Fulham, who look a bit more compact than West Brom,” said Lescott on BT Sport 2 on Tuesday night.
“They have to go to that game eradicating tonight’s performance and result and be like, ‘this is what we do to win this game’. They have to have a single mindset to do that.”
When asked how they’ll set up against Fulham, Lescott said: “You’d say a [back-four] but they’ll set up differently to tonight because it didn’t work but obviously, in regards to personnel you would expect Bartley to come back into the team and potentially be a bit more adventurous going forward.”
Bartley has to return
It feels strange saying this because Bartley has been such an underwhelming player in his two and a half years at The Hawthorns – but he needs to start on Saturday.
We definitely look better with him in the defence alongside Semi Ajayi. Dara O’Shea is a good young player but that’s his issue, he lacks a lot of experience and is prone to errors.
Bartley is prone to errors but you know he’s also going to make some big, potentially match-saving defensive moves as he has done in his career at West Brom.
We’d expect him to play alongside Ajayi in the centre-back positions against Fulham with O’Shea maybe moving to the right-back slot, where he played against Wolves and West Ham.
No matter what, there has to be a drastic improvement from absolutely everyone at the Baggies in order to get a result against Fulham.
They may be our nearest rival in the battle to avoid relegation but that counts for nothing when the team is playing as poorly as it is.
In other West Brom news, there’s been a big update on the ownership mystery at The Hawthorns.
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