West Brom eye former ‘Non-league Barcelona’ manager John Eustace
West Brom are reportedly keeping tabs on Birmingham City boss John Eustace whose former side Kidderminster Harriers were dubbed the “Non-league Barcelona”.
According to Express and Star on 19 October, Eustace has attracted admiring glances from the Baggies hierarchy who are keen on appointing a permanent manager soon.
They want to ideally name Steve Bruce’s successor ahead of Saturday’s trip to Millwall after a thorough and extensive recruitment process.
Mini Barcelona at Hawthorns?
Eustace is a manager with a defined style of play which was reminiscent of his early days as well when he was managing the Non-league side.
Then Gainsborough Trinity boss Dave Frecklington manager said of the Englishman after they lost 3-0 to his side [2017], via Worcester News, “They are like a non-league Barcelona with the way they play. It doesn’t matter how you set up, we had to change formation three times to try to tackle it.”
Eustace has since climbed up the ranks in the pyramid and is now a second-division manager with Birmingham.
While they are ahead of the Baggies on the table, they are not really a contender for promotion and are not set up to operate like a Premier League.
West Brom, it can be argued, have a culture of being a top-flight club and before every season starts, are among the favourites to finish in the play-off positions.
Even this season, all is not lost as Steve Cooper showed with Nottingham Forest last season that nothing is impossible.
It will be interesting if they go down the Eustace route but that seems unlikely as things stand.
In other West Brom news, John Terry was spotted fuming on Twitter after a Baggies suggestion during Chelsea v Leeds United.
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