Match Day Thread Southampton V West Bromwich Albion Saturday 16th January KO 15:00

Football is full of myths and fiction. The skates have made up some completely fictitious nonsense to justify calling us scum when they would have been better off spending their time thinking up a clever insult instead. They are just too bloody lazy and it leaves us all laughing at their pathetic nonsense.

I don't believe a word of it.

 

I'm still curious about Albion, which I believe was a term the Victorians used to describe a mythical pre-Christian England? I can think of WBA and Brighton and Hove off the top of my head, sure there's plenty of others.

 

According to Wikepedia, Albion (Greek) is the oldest known name for Great Britain and is used poetically now. Interestingly, Romans referred to Scotland as Albania.

Found this:
And why the "Albion" bit at the end ?
Albion is, of course, an ancient name for Britain, but by that logic all teams would be called something or other Albion. As it is, there's only us. Oh, and Brighton & Hove Albion. And Burton Albion. And Witton Albion. And up in Scotland there's Albion and Albion Rovers. So why do we have that bit on our name?

From Dr Bryn Jones:

I defer to the experts on this one. However, there is an old foundry district of West Bromwich which predates the club and used to be called 'Albion' - it may still be on some maps. It's a reasonable guess - though only a guess - that the original players just took the name from there; either because some came from that district, or just because it sounded impressive.

From Stephen Webb:

As I understand it (and I may misunderstand it) back in the mists of time we used to be the WB Strollers, until a time before the turn of the century when many of our players worked on the Albion industrial estate. So we changed the name. This might be utter crap of course. Or I might just have got it wrong.

 

West Brom are unbeaten in their last three Premier League matches against Southampton, but Tony Pulis has revealed he will be without midfielder James Morrison and possibly defender Jonas Olsson for the clash at St Mary’s.

Pulis said: "Rickie Lambert missed the Chelsea trip through illness. He will be back in contention for the game against Southampton tomorrow."

Please don't do it to us Rickie

 

The bag idea is much better anyway.

 

I suspect you might have too much time on your hands.....

 

Just love words.

Not wasting my whole day....waiting for lift to a pub.

 

Oh.. I thought it (thrush) had something to do with being irritating......

 

Enjoy. Give us a run down of hotel, restaurants, costs, value, etc in Koeman's once your bag Os... looking to do that trip myself soon.

 

I know, but he is getting closer and closer. Yes, lots of other players work rate is top notch too. I have no stats, but from what I saw, he leads the close down charge quite a lot.... I am seeing more and more good signs. He is going to be a star for us*

*trust me, I said the same about Gaston

 

Oi Whiteley... this is the really, really, positive thread. Please refer to the form guide in the OP. Much better info there

 

2pm allegedly.

 

See, you can't even be positive about the timing of the press conference!

 

Lawro thinks we will win 2-1

 

I think there needs to be a good reason to change a winning team.
Once again 5-3-2 isn't inherently defensive as it is actually 3-5-2 when you have the ball. Formations don't win or lose games.
If we can play with the same energy and creativity we will win ... obviously.
We are better than a lot of teams in the Prem when we get it as right as we did v Watford.

What the hell 3-0! Against a Pulis team?
See what this thread has done to me

 

All hail the really, really positive match thread...it's a self fulfilling prophesy I tells ya!....

 

Formations matter. Players still have to do the business, but without the right tactics they can be puffing against the wind.

The biggest argument against three at the back tomorrow is that WBA are likely to only have one upfront. So that will reduce our forward passing options and make it more difficult for us to maintain possession further up the pitch and we could see ourselves outnumbered in midfield. Last season we played against WBA with three at the back away from home and Ron ended up changing it after 20 minutes.

Personally I would change Targett for Pelle with Mane & Long in support.