Albion blogger Jarrod Hill sees plenty to get excited about in 2010 as the club prepare to start their big New Year push for promotion.

Hi folks, hope you all had a great Christmas and here’s hoping for a Happy New Year. Three wins for the Albion certainly helped me enjoy the festive season, although our FA Cup game away at Huddersfield turned into a travelling nightmare, but more of that later.

The two league wins against Scunthorpe and Peterborough have helped us go into 2010 in an automatic promotion position and sets up the titanic battle with Nottingham Forest this Friday night nicely.

Our Boxing Day game against Posh at the Hawthorns turned into a game of two halves. We played poorly before the break, but within the first 20 minutes of the second-half the three points were secure. It seems our head coach Roberto Di Matteo isn’t averse to giving the lads a kick up the backside and we looked a different team after the break, playing with pace and purpose.

Scunthorpe away was certainly eventful with the referees whistle burning red hot. The lads played reasonably well and its these type of results on which promotion can be built. Graham Dorrans opened the scoring that day and has had a rather eventful couple of weeks.

Not only has the Scotland star continued his good form and notched two more goals to become our top goal scorer, but has also signed a new deal with the club. I hope this is an indication that his future with us and all attempts to lure him away during this transfer window are repelled.

Talking of transfers I would like to welcome our new loan signing Gabriel Tamas. His arrival coincides with the departure of Abdoulaye Meite to the African Cup of Nations and the Romanian brings with him a reputation of being a very talented footballer, but one that can be easily distracted.

I hope the bright lights of Birmingham do not distract him too much and he can become a valuable member of the squad. The opening of the transfer window has seen little activity in general and the trend tends to be a flurry of signings made towards the end of the month.

Our chairman Jeremy Peace has already stated that any signings would need to be funded by players being sold, and for this fact alone I think this could be an interesting month.

Friday sees us entertain our Midland neighbours Forest for our biggest game of the season so far. I am planning to go to the game straight from work and, as my office is based in Hockley, the journey is short and easy.

It’s a shame I could not say the same about our journey to Huddersfield on Saturday. We eventually gave up after everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. It begun with a tyre blowing out, two new tyres later and further car problems led to having to begin the journey in a change of wagon. I

t meant we were pushing it for time, another unscheduled stop – why do women’s cars constantly run without water or petrol? – meant that a clear run up the M6 and M62 was required. After trawling through endless road works I was still adamant we could make kick off, until we hit a snow blizzard that reduced the traffic down to a crawl.

The radio reports coming in were telling us that the York team bus travelling along the M62 was stuck due to heavy snow and would be late arriving for their game away at Stoke. As time ticked on it became clear that we were not going to make it and, with my girlfriend becoming increasingly nervous at my speedy driving in hazardous conditions, we made the decision to stop and turn round two thirds into the journey.

Somebody upstairs certainly didn’t want us to attend that game, my mood was only tempered by the fact we won!

So let’s hope 2010 brings us what we all want and, if you are feeling a little down after the festive holidays and your return to work, I have made a list of things to be cheerful about: -

We are still on course for promotion, we have a strong squad that will hopefully see James Morrison and Ishmael Miller added to it, at the end of the season we could be celebrating promotion and a host of players going of to the World Cup and – last but but no means least – you could be a Portsmouth fan!

Happy New Year all!