West Brom fans can play bigger role than they think v Southampton in Championship play-off clash
West Brom welcome Southampton to The Hawthorns on Sunday afternoon in what is the biggest game the club has faced in years.
Saturday’s 3-0 win over Preston in the Black Country enabled Carlos Corberan’s side to reclaim fifth position and set up a Championship play-off semi-final clash with the Saints, who finished fourth under Russell Martin.
Southampton’s finish outside the top three will no doubt be seen as an underachievement by those within St Mary’s and Martin and his men will be keen to silence any critics to bounce back to the Premier League at the first time of asking.
As for the Albion, a lot of us are – how do you put it? – happy to be here.
As I wrote in my last article, pre-season expectations were low. Most of us expected a battle against relegation and very few of us predicted Corberan’s men to finish just below the three best/wealthiest teams in Championship history, plus an incredibly good Ipswich side, in fifth place.
One of those three teams makes it’s way to the Black Country this weekend with two matches against Southampton standing in the way of West Brom and their first trip to Wembley since April 2008 when Nwankwo Kanu’s controversial goal for Portsmouth denied Albion a spot in the FA Cup final.
West Brom fans need to make themselves count in Championship play-offs v Southampton
Corberan’s men have stuttered a bit in recent weeks, admittedly.
While the Albion were in fine form against Preston on Saturday and also delivered a solid and respectable display in the defeat at Leicester on 20 April, performances of late have been rather shoddy.
Corberan’s team selection and in-game management had been poor, players had been making stupid mistakes, missed golden opportunities and simply underperformed.
Was that all put to bed against Preston? Or was it just a team with something to play for playing against a team that already had one foot on the beach?
Ultimately, we’ll never know the answer to that question but West Brom fans can surely help their team to deliver a similar performance by turning The Hawthorns into a cauldron of noise this weekend when the Saints make their way to the West Midlands.
West Brom fans have created some incredible atmospheres over the years but the one that I’ve found myself thinking about a lot lately was the one forged in the intense West Brom v Aston Villa play-off showdown of 2019.
The Hawthorns roared on an extremely depleted team made up of youngsters, fringe players and walking wounded to take a Jack Grealish-inspired Villa all the way to a penalty shoot-out. Ultimately, that’s where our lack of experience showed and we lost the game but the pure adrenaline created a Krakatoa-esque eruption of noise from the home fans got us to within a whisker of Wembley.
It can be the same on Sunday.
No, we’re not playing a local rival and yes, the home tie being in the first leg is a slight disadvantage. But come on, Albion fans, the noise has to at least replicate what we produced in that game against Villa. The overall result across two legs, however, must not.
In other West Brom news, the Baggies have to be wary after what this Southampton player said ahead of Sunday’s first leg.
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