Baggies Bounce Back For Point

Pic: Getty

West Bromwich Albion continued on from their impressive home win against Arsenal last week by battling back in the second half to secure a well earned point at the Baggies’ final visit to Upton Park.

As one might expect having watched West Brom away from home at all this season, the Baggies went to East London ready to shut up shop and battle for a point. West Ham had other ideas and it meant an interesting change in intensity from the usually lacklustre Baggies. As many disgruntled Albion fans are only too happy to point out, West Brom play for a point far too often and it was certainly refreshing to see the positive fight back in the second half.

Firstly however, as mentioned, Albion were there fro the point and West Ham were all too aware of this fact. They opened the scoring on 17 minutes with a cracking free kick from Mauro Zarate, who has found East London far more hospitable this season under Slaven Bilic than last year under Sam Allardyce when he was shunted out on loan to QPR in the January transfer window.

Despite being under heavy pressure for most of the first half, the Baggies managed to keep the score at just 1-0 despite the fact that West Ham could have gone 2 or 3-0 up by the interval.

The second half was a different story however and West Brom came out of the traps a different beast, the equaliser coming in the 50th minute, an own goal from the unfortunate Winston Reid, after a deflected shot from Rickie Lambert. Lambert has struggled since arriving at The Hawthorns in the summer but looks to be settling into the team’s rhythm and also looks to be in better shape than when he first signed for the club. Following today’s performance it could be suggested that he would be unlucky not to start against Spurs next week given his good link up play with the steadily improving James McClean.

Off the pitch many Baggies fans baulked at the prices charged to watch the team at Upton Park today. With this season marking The Hammer’s last in the famous old ground, many Albion fans, myself included, were interested in the opportunity to visit it for the last time. However with ticket prices upwards of £40 on top of travel fees it could certainly be deemed as a costly day out. Especially with how topsy-turvy Albion can be away from home.

It will be interesting to see If Albion can carry this little run they have going now into a tough run of fixtures. Next week sees Tottenham Hotspur visit The Hawthorns with Spurs unbeaten since the opening day and some even talking of the title heading to White Hart Lane. It will be interesting to see if The Baggies can pull off a defensive display akin to that in the Arsenal game to stall Spurs’ momentum.