Jermaine Jenas blasts West Brom for lacking creativity
Jermaine Jenas has criticised the lack of creativity at West Brom under Sam Allardyce, pointing to a key statistic that shows how the club hasn’t improved.
The Baggies fell to a disappointing 1-0 defeat to Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park after Darnell Furlong’s handball resulted in a penalty that was dispatched by Luka Milivojevic.
Albion needed a result to boost their survival hopes, however they came away from South London with nothing while both Newcastle and Brighton picked up points.
Allardyce succeeded Slaven Bilic in the dugout at the Hawthorns in December, and many had hoped that the former England manager’s record of Premier League survival would aid Albion’s chances of avoiding the drop.
Talking on Match of the Day on Saturday however, Jermaine Jenas dismissed the club’s chances, pointing to a damning statistic that highlights the club’s decline.
Jenas said: “I suppose when it comes to Sam Allardyce and him taking over jobs at this time of the year, when he’s gone to certain clubs, closing things at the back has always been one of the huge positives of what he does.
“But we can see here kind of pre-Sam Allardyce, shots on target were at 2.9 per game to what they are now under Allardyce at 2.4. It tells you that creativity has not improved at all and today was a clear example of that.
“They get the ball into those areas high up the pitch and are just not convincing, not enough runs into the box and that tells you one thing really, they aren’t going to score.”
Unfair comparison
Statistics hardly ever tell the full story in football, particularly when they don’t also provide the subtext, and we think that Jenas is a little off base here.
In comparing how many shots on target West Brom have had before and after Allardyce took charge at the club this season, Jenas isn’t also taking into account how the club have changed over the past month with new signings now on board.
Mbaye Diagne, Okay Yokuslu and Ainsley Maitland-Niles all joined right at the very end of the transfer window, meaning those games between Allardyce’s appointment and the final few days of the window tell a completely different story than the games since the transfer window closed.
Albion do suffer creatively, and maybe we just don’t have the required talent to survive the drop and retain our Premier League status this season, but certainly the stats can’t be used in isolation to paint the whole picture.
In other West Brom news, Allardyce has admitted that he has a dilemma over Callum Robinson and Karlan Grant.
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