Carlos Corberan invites Tony Brown back to West Brom as FA Cup inspiration
West Brom will have to make it past a replay against non-league Chesterfield in the FA Cup despite a visit from a club legend in training.
“Bomber”, as he is known to fans, was a part of the Baggies side that lifted the famous trophy in 1968 and Carlos Corberan wanted that winner’s mentality to be rubbed off on the players.
As a result, he invited Brown, who now works as a summariser for BBC Radio West Midlands, to the training ground in the build-up to the game in Derbyshire which ended 3-3 after a pulsating match.
“The other day I had the pleasure to meet Tony Brown, he won the competition the last time in ‘68,” Corberan said, as quoted by the Express and Star.
“He is someone very special who has scored many goals for this club, being a midfielder, that is something even more interesting.
“You can only learn from the past, at this club, the fact it has a big past does not mean that it could have a big present or future.
“But I feel lucky to be in a club with this past, I feel very proud to be at a club that has one five FA Cups, it means a lot to me to be in a club with a lot of history.”
Distant memory
It is now 55 years since that famous day when West Brom were the cream of the crop and an awful lot has gone on since then, much of which is not what any Albion fan had hoped for.
The latest off-field problems aside, West Brom have gone from a top-flight side to one that features very rarely in the Premier League and spends more time languishing in the second tier instead.
Failing to beat a fifth-tier side in the third round of the cup is not really an acceptable result even with 11 changes to the side that usually plays in the Championship every week.
But Corberan has overseen a sudden turnaround at The Hawthorns and won’t have that result held against him if they can come through the replay on home soil.
With the Spaniard in charge, it is not beyond perceivable that the right transfers could see the club bounce back into the Premier League where they can go about returning to their great selves again.
In other West Brom news, the BBC and ITV are set to receive a strongly-worded letter from a Labour MP after they made their FA Cup replay picks.