West Brom sacking Corberan would be as stupid as what Coventry and Hull did
West Brom hired Carlos Corberan as Steve Bruce’s replacement just over two years ago with Albion sat second from bottom in the Championship.
Twenty-five months on and 102 matches later, Corberan is still in charge at The Hawthorns, making him the third-longest serving manager in the Championship behind Middlesbrough’s Michael Carrick – whose reign is one day longer – and Derby’s Paul Warne – whose reign is 33 days longer.
Let’s get the good stuff out of the way first because I’ve got quite a lot to say about the recent vitriol about Corberan and the job he’s doing at West Brom.
After over 100 matches, the Spaniard has a win rate of 44.1 per cent. It’s less than what Jesse Carver and Ronnie Allen managed in the 1950s and 1970s respectively and also less than what Roberto Di Matteo (48%) and Darren Moore (47%) managed during their spells in charge at The Hawthorns.
But out of managers who’ve managed more than 100 games for West Brom, Corberan has the highest win rate in Hawthorns history, narrowly beating Ron Atkinson’s 44.0 per cent record.
I know what people are going to say, ‘Atkinson’s record was in the First Division’. Yes, I know. I’m not saying that Corberan’s better than Atkinson, so put your pitchforks away.
But I am going to say that he’s the best manager we’ve had in a long time.
Disregarding caretaker managers, Corberan is the 22nd West Bromwich Albion manager of my lifetime. Ardiles was busy managing Albion to a 2-0 win against Chester City on the day I was born on Boxing Day in 1992 with Paul Raven scoring both goals.
I can’t sit and write about how I remember Atkinson or whatever – nor even Ardiles. The first Albion manager I knew properly was Gary Megson, so as far as my memory goes, Corberan is the 16th manager I’ve known as a Baggies fan.
Some will argue it’s controversial but I’m going to put Corberan as fifth best on that list after Roy Hodgson, Megson, Tony Mowbray and Steve Clarke, in that order.
Hodgson set us up for the best Premier League years, oversaw that 5-1 win at Molineux and regularly had Albion matching some of the best teams in the world. Megson doesn’t need explaining while Mowbray took us to Wembley twice and made us the most exciting-to-watch team in England while Clarke took us to the dizzying heights of an eighth-placed finish in the Premier League.
Corberan just about goes ahead of Pulis – who I never rated as badly as the majority of fans – ahead of Slaven Bilic, ahead of Roberto Di Matteo and so on. Pepe Mel, Alan Irvine, Alan Pardew, Valerien Ismael and Steve Bruce can get in the bin.
Now I’m sat here regularly seeing posts on social media and hearing fans saying that Corberan needs to go.
What?
West Brom sacking Corberan would be crazy – but he does need to figure stuff out
Two years ago we were bottom of the Championship, hurtling towards League One in the lowest ebb of what I can remember supporting the Albion.
Now we’re challenging for the play-offs for the third time in a row with a pragmatic young manager at the helm who’s had to work with one hand tied behind his back thanks to the financial limitations that have been forced upon the club due to years of rudderless Chinese leadership and the EFL’s Profit & Sustainability Rules.
I’ve seen a lot of people comparing Corberan to Bilic, who almost squandered his promotion from the Championship after COVID with a team boasting the likes of Sam Johnstone, Ahmed Hegazi, Filip Krovinovic, Jake Livermore, Matt Phillips, Chris Brunt, Matheus Pereira and an in-form Grady Diangana.
As bad as he turned out, Bilic was able to spend £8million on a player like Kenneth Zohore and waste huge wages on the likes of Charlie Austin. Pereira was essentially signed for £9million, too as the obligation-to-buy clause in his loan from Sporting CP was always likely to be triggered.
Corberan’s had to wheel and deal, mostly signing free agents, bumping up youngsters from the academy and taking advantage of the loan market. Mikey Johnston joined for £3million from Celtic in what was the biggest outlay last summer, but even that deal is broken up into instalments to avoid breaching PSR.
Albion’s financial plight was recently summed by former Birmingham Mail journalist Chris Lepkowski, who suggests the Black Country club might not even be able to afford to terminate Corberan’s contract if they wanted to – and that a high-value player is likely to be sold in 2025 (Tom Fellows leaving in the summer if we don’t go up is very likely, in my opinion).
There was huge outcry in the summer when Cedric Kipre couldn’t be retained and Okay Yokuslu left for a pittance. They were two of our best players last season and they’d left, but no one seems to be remembering stuff like that right now.
Baggies fans have had to endure some pretty dull performances and results in the last couple of months – there’s no denying that.
We’ve won one of the last 11 league games if you want to put a negative spin on it. We’re unbeaten in nine though if you’re a glass-half-full kind of person.
The fact you can put two different slants on our form at the moment suggests that you don’t have to be all-in on ‘Corberan has to go’ or ‘Corberan has to stay’. You can say that he needs to do better but you don’t think he should be sacked yet.
Ultimately, we’re seventh in the table with a squad that, year-on-year, has been drained of it’s quality. We’re by no means in a state of crisis but at the same time, we’re not planning any kind of promotion party or getting ready to name the East Stand after Torbjorn Heggem.
If you spread Albion’s points out over 17 matches, would there really be any kind of mass hysteria and people calling for a change in leadership?
Look at what’s happened to Hull City after they sacked Liam Rosnier even though he took them to seventh last season. Look at the reaction to Coventry sacking Mark Robins and replacing him with Frank Lampard. Look at what happened when Birmingham sacked Gary Rowett when they were seventh in 2016 and replaced him with Gianfranco Zola, or even last season when they got rid of John Eustance and got Wayne Rooney in.
Time and time again, managerial sackings in this position have turned out to be stupid moves. Longevity and stability are what I really want and if people show some patience, I’m sure Corberan will get us out of this rut and show us once again why everyone was singing his praises so loudly just a month or two ago.
In other West Brom news, Robbie Earnshaw has ripped into the Baggies after what he’s seen.
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