Entire Albion squad put ‘on alert’
Tuesday 22nd February 2011, 10:59AM GMT.
Albion boss Roy Hodgson has put his entire squad ‘on alert’ as they prepare for the final 11 matches of their Premier League survival fight.
Utility man Steven Reid has revealed every member of the Baggies’ 25-man Premier League squad has been told by the new head coach to be ready to play a part.
The likes of Reid, Somen Tchoyi, Giles Barnes and Simon Cox have had few opportunities in recent weeks.
But Reid said: “We’ve had meetings and training sessions and we’re getting to know each other but he’s put all 25 of us on alert.
“We know that we will all be needed. I’ve played for a few managers so change is normal.
“If I can keep fit, which I’m confident of, then I hope to play a major part.”
And Reid, who made a brief appearance from the substitutes’ bench in Hodgson’s first game in charge on Sunday, believes the former Liverpool boss has already made his presence felt since succeeding Roberto Di Matteo.
The 30-year-old said: “Roy Hodgson has had a big effect. It was only a short week for him last week to try to get his points across but it was very intense.
“Defensively his aim is to keep clean sheets. If we can do that we’re always confident of scoring at the other end.
“I think we saw the benefits of the training on Sunday. For all of Wolves’ possession, Boaz Myhill didn’t actually have that much to do.
“You can’t always play that free-flowing football. You sometimes need your two banks of four and to not concede. The aim has to be to tighten up.
“We will need desire and mental strength because it will get tense. We will need to keep our heads and keep belief that we’re going in the right direction.
“It’s a massive challenge for us that will ask questions of our character, but we have to rise to it.”
Albion return to action at Stoke next Monday and Reid is eying revenge for the Potters’ 3-0 win at the Hawthorns in November.
He said: “Stoke came and turned us over earlier this season so we owe them one.
“They’re physical and get the ball into the box for their big players so we know we have to defend well.
“If we do that we’re always confident of scoring one.”
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Er,yes,right. No disrespect but this article appears to be telling us that the players the club employ have to be ready to play if asked. That our new manager has discovered we let too many goals in and that we are up the creek having maybe not lost our paddle but certainly having mislaid it at the moment.
Tomorrow we will doubtless be told His Holiness the Pope is a Roman Catholic and bears often relieve themselves in wooded areas!
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I think Barnes and Tchoyi have had more than a few opportunities, I think I’d like to see Miller back to bring on as a sub against the likes of Stoke who put it about a bit. The likes of Morrison against Stoke is a non starter. I’d like to see a 4-5-3 of Myhill back five of Reid Oloson Tamas Sharmer Shorey ….Mulumbu Dorrens in midfield and Fortuna and Vela to start…..then bring on Odewingie Thomas etc.
No you can see why I’m not a manager
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No 1. Sant Loving the wit man!
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awesome first post lol
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You Moaning Morons never miss an opportunity to be negative do ya!
Why can’t you see it as the rallying call it was?
I’ll bet you wasn’t singing at 0-1 on Sunday.
Stay at home we don’t need you!
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No 1.
I’ve been accused of sarcasm and it really is the lowest form of wit, especially when the target of it has no means of reply.
The player is answering a journalists questions. What he’s saying is that RH is looking at the entire squad, which is sensible. He’s addressing our defensive problems, obvious but still good to know. In your view what should he be telling us? The meaning of life. A bit of quantum physics.
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Steve Sant.
My post was too you,probably a Dingle but it might stop one of own Moaning Morons Posting.
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SC Baggie! Definitely not a manager. 4-5-3 that’s 2 more than allowed on the pitch, then you name a 5-2-2 which is 1 short. Great post, made my day, but like me mate,don’t give up the day job.
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If we go to Stoke with our less physical players we will get bullied as usual an lose the game 2 or 3 to set peices. If we play our physically stronger players to stand up to them we may well nick it. My team would be 1-4-5-1 formation
Myhill
Jara
Tamas
Ollson
Shorey
Tchoyi (Wide Right)
Brunt (Wide Left)
Sharner
Mulumbu
Reid
Odemwingie
Subs
Kieley
Dorrans
Vella
Morrison
ETC
If we play the likes of Morrison, Dorrans they are good footballers but it’s not the game for them. Thomas i would put the fire on for him at home and put a blanket over him and tell him to catch up with the soaps! Not a night for Thomas i’m afraid!
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8Trev
Thanks Trev it was an error but maybe 12 would help us.
Romsley…I agree we need our stronger players for this one with a quick man up front Odewingie or Vela.
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Personally,if I was a member of the squad,I’d go to bed in me Albion kit,and bang on the Manager’s door first thing every morning,pleading to be let loose on the pitch.
I’m certainly hoping that,having made the 25 Man squad,EVERY player will be fired up to do all they can to pull us up the table.
Although one thing came to mind when I saw the ‘entire squad put on alert’ headline-
Thank God Fabian De Freitas is no longer part of it.
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Romsley Baggie:
I tend do agree to a certain extent, but I would play the following… 4-1-2-2-1
GK – Myhill
RB – Reid (I think a better RB than Jara as he can tackle)
CB – Ibanez (extra height over Tamas)
CB – Olsson
LB – Shorey
DM – Mulumbu
CM – Scharner
CM – Dorrans
CAM – Brunt
CAM – Tchoyi
CF – Odemwingine
I would play more through the middle as I dont think exploiting the flanks will do much good, at the end of the day, I cant see Odemwingie rising above any of their Zorgs in defence. Allowing Dorrans to join in a 3 man central attacking unit to support Odemwingie and then drop back to CM when were defending.
Just a thought….
You can tell I play Champ Manager! lol
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In the wake of all the opposition to big Sam how ironic is it that a man noted for his
technical style of management on Sunday decided with 10 mins to put the big guy from the back up front and launch it.
One more thing that would not have happened
under alladyce is that Wolves wouldnt have so much possesion in midfield as we would has pressed them harder.
We actually made there midfield look good and they are anything but.
Don’t get me wrong i aint Alladyces biggest fan but we cannot get the basics right of closing bown and defending from the front.
If RH is to give everone a fair chance i hope Fourtne has had his and never kicks a ball for us again (come back Luke Moore all is forgiven)
I hope RH can organise us quickly and i hope he see’s things in training this week that
can give us an organized and committed team
for Stoke.
Any one who says that they would sooner go down playing the Albion way is a fool, On Sunday we launched it scored against the dingles and loved it.
We have got to grind this out stay in this league and only then can we start to look at a better quality of football
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Looking forward to putting the cat amongst the proverbial pondlife on Monday night.
We’re due a win over Stoke, and we’ll do it. The tide is turning in our favour. It’s time for others to have a bad run.
Woy has made a difference already (ok we only got a point on Sunday but it was a great point under the circumstances).
CMON YOU BAGGIES!!!
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2. You’ve just made yourself look a complete wombat.
People can say tchoyi/barnes have had more than enough blah blah…. Look at brunt/morrison etc… They ain’t producing the goods.
Tchoyi as frustrating as he sometimes can be, has a spark and ability to produce a moment of brilliance…. James Morrison…. Doesn’t.
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Its all about mental strength…….the players are good enough….earlier results prove that…but the power of disbelief was evident after losing confidence after being 3-0 up at half time against West Ham.
If they get their mental toughness sorted the results will follow……Its ours to throw away, and we cant afford one player with the jitters.
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It must depend on where you sit to see so many variations on ‘who to hate’. We all tend to have Jonas as our role model but be fair, he’s built for it and the fact he’s a ‘Bloody Viking’ gives him a head start. It seems silly to me to keep popping at Morrison. He’s built for ball play which he normally does very well and he did do well when he came on.
We knew that Fortuné isn’t not a natural goalscorer so why keep hammering him? I thought the defence seemed more composed than for a while, yet when Tamas mis-headed we could have been 2-0 down. I like Tamas a lot but I wouldn’t have slaughtered him verbally had Wolves scored. Take our new loanee. He could end up a bag of bones and blood if they catch up with him, yet if they can’t, he may torment them to death. WE JUST DON’T KNOW until we play. We have beaten Stoke in my lifetime, but I’m damned if I can remember when. Get the prayer mats out and point them all the same way!
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Morrison no brilliance? I’ll just imagine his goal v Man U never happened then.
Possession against Wolves, don’t make me laugh, we did conced the majority to them in the first half, they did nothing with it, one shot on target. Over the whole game we had the majority and they still only mustered one shot on target. Don’t believe me? Go check the Opta Stats for the game.
Come back Luke Moore for Fortune?!!!?
What a joke. Fortune scored more goals in a loan spell and playing a bit part this season than Moore did in all his years. And he aded build up play Moore never did. That doesn’t mean I think he was very good, but if you can’t get that level of perspective I despair.
Hodgson takes over and for the first time since I can’t remember when we concede less than two goals. Not bad for such a short time having taken over, give him some slack eh guys.
Stoke need to be attacked. We can NOT beat them at the muscling, physical bullying style, we simply do not have those sorts of players. We need to outfootball them. Of course we need to be organised especially against set pieces, but that is of course true for any team.
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17 Cyril
If my memory serves me right, I remember a Cup game, one misty night when we beat Stoke 2~1 (I think) & one of the goals was scored by Kevin Kilbane, we’d not long bought him from Preston…how many years ago was that??
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17 Cyril.
There were even some on here questioning Jonas Olsson’s ability after the West Ham game, which must prove that everyone is fair game to the doubters.
15 MA.
Good to see you coming to the defence of two players but why the need to have a go at another player to do it?
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Is it only me who remembers only a few years ago when we beat Stoke 1-0 up the Hawthorns, Dobie scored having missed an absolute sitter minutes before! I think it was under Megson in our 2nd promotion season
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is carson injured as he was not on the bench, yes we had 29 bids in january but torres went for more than we bid that was daft !!!! also how many ex albion strikers are scoring, beattie, roberts,earnshaw, dyer ahhh the list goes on, !!!!! and i will still support them in the conference !!!!
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I suppose we all have players we dis/like, but it’s hard in our current situation to offer honest appraisal without being attacked for “having a go” at our own players.
So here goes… We need to stop Stoke scoring or at least out score them; I don’t feel we have the physical strength to out-gun them, therefore, the key issue if preventing them getting the ball in our box. I thought the first half against West Ham – up to Mulumbu’s departure was the best closing we’ve done in months. More of the same, please!
Miller is a big guy who lacks balance and as a result is a powder puff 9 times out of 10. Fortune isn’t a goal scorer and he needs to mentally ‘toughen up’, but he does put himself about and holds up the ball – in the team for Stoke and I agree, Tchoyi for Thomas. Barnes – well the ideal role for him is marking the half-time oranges…
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Well said Roy, no mind games, no bigging up the team, no we will do this or that, no are bound to stay up. Just straight talk from the hip. We’ll take one match at a time, do what we do well. Great leadership, with years of experience. Whether we stay up or not, us fans know everyone will have done their best. Thanks Roy, Thanks lads. we can ask for no more either way. Come on you BAGGIES.
BOING~~~~BOING~~~~JtH.
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I fear for us now. we needed to beat Wolves to stand a chance of staying up remember Wolves are bottom of the table and a poor team. RH will try and improve us in defence but he has a load of rubbish to work with one of the worst Ive seen bring back Wile Robertson and co !!
I would rather have Miller up front than Fortune but with our defence it wont matter who is up front. Going down but will support them what ever league we’re in.
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Jonathan, Nottm and TRBH. I heard Jonas blamed for Tamas’ bad header, yet on BBC it was quite clear who made the slip. I’m not suggesting we should now hammer Tamas. I was also amused to read The Wulfies criticising their left winger Jarvis, but that had to be just for ONE error in a local derby, yet the kid sent Jara into meltdown at one stage and later cleared a certain Olsson goal off the line. I can and will remind everyone that I worshipped at the shrine of Ray Barlow and Ronnie Allen, but they made mistakes at times.
Memory and time say they never did of course. But their sheer brilliance for the majority of a game was what we wanted to recall. Not the odd ding-dong-bell-clanger. Not even Billy Wright was perfect my Wulfie friends, but he was a dream of a player in spite of that!
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Sorry but there’s too much being aimed at Mozza lately.
Against Man U he and PO were carving them open,combining well together, then RDM took him off,couldn’t believe it at the time.
Involved again Sunday for goal.
Or have I dreampt it?
Maybe when He’s got the ball and looking for options, others should be telling him when someones coming on from behind.
Talking is half the game.
Why has the Booing crept in at matches,where doe’s that get anyone.
OK maybe at the end,but not before or during.
Brunt must have wanted the earth to open up on Sunday,He’d only been voted MOM not that He should have been, but it wasn’t His fault.
C’mon we’re better than all that,they need positive vibes,we need to be the twelth man.
BAGGIESBAGGIESBAGGIES
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Well done Chris Wood scored for Brighton again.
Blackpool beat Tottenham.
MMM the Wulfies have been bleating on about winning that 1.
Freefall?
We’ll soon see.
BAGGIESBAGGIESBAGGIES
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i sin loads of dingles going to the hawthorns with flares,i think they was wearing um last time they beat us as well,aye boing boing
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Cyril soz bout sunday mate i was actualy on my way when my mate foned to say his car wouldent startso i had to turn back and go to beechdale and get him to match by time i got back was to late,but daint know you was guin anyway,pub at 10am sunday morning,what wud the vicar say aye boing boing
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26 Cyril.
Got to agree with you. It’s a sign of the times isn’t it? Score a goal and you’re a hero. Have a poor game and you’re rubbish. Nothing in between, although favourites are sometimes allowed two games whereas Carson, Morrison, Jara etc are barely allowed one mistake before the Al Reads in the crowd start on them.
Still I suppose the pay packet offers a little compensation but just how do the boo boys expect the players to have any confidence when the slightest misplaced pass leads to a collective groan?
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27 Brierley Hill.
Great post.
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29 Sir Terry.
Thank you for once again cheering up a dull morning. Brilliant.
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I’m doing my best to look forward to Monday but we’re up against a triple whammy.
1. It’s Stoke.
2. It’s an evening game.
3. It’s on Sky.
All of our black cats rolled into one giant bogey.
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(27)
BHB,
The booing I heard was for the referee. Some crazy decisions.
Blackpool to be a pushover,Eh.
BOING~~~~BOING~~~~JtH.
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Over on the dark side, Jamie O’Hara has apparently entered Wolves folklore by scoring against us. I suppose it is a fairly rare achievement though.
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(33)
Bully,
Wonder if too many cooks will spoil the broth?.
BOING~~~~BOING~~~~JtH.
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36 TRBH-
I haven’t read the post,but have they mentioned that they had to ‘borrow’ him from another club to become their hero?
(I know Vela’s also on loan,but I don’t think we will be erecting a statue of him outside the Hawthorns).
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The way i see it is that the late equaliser will surely be good for confidence of the squad, how many games have we come from behind this season , a few, and hodgsons substitution was spot on, wheteher or not some people liked it or not (giles barnes etc) the manager put on vela, and he scored (job done)to me that was amassive point, hodgson can and will put some belief into the players, thats why he got the job.we aint a bad team there is worse than us, but a few battling performances, a win away at stoke,(totally possible)with hodgsons tactical astuteness and were away up the table, COME ON ALBION, get in their and show your mettle
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36 TRBH-
I’ve just read Jamie O’Hara’s interview.
Despite Albion completely dominating the second half,and having a lot more shots than wolves,he finishes by saying ‘I think we deserved to win’.
It hasn’t taken him long to adopt the ‘wolves mentality’,has it?
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40 CR78.
There’s now an article from Karl Henry about how they plan to score lots more of these ‘clever’ goals from free kicks.
It was a well taken goal but let’s face it, we were sloppy and didn’t defend it and 99 times out of 100 it would end up in the back of the stand anyway.
Still I suppose they don’t create much from open play do they?
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TRBH (41)
Ive just read the Karl Henry post also, but now he has mentioned the “surprises from set pieces” doesnt that now mean they are not surprises” ? or is it me being stupid ?
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41 TRBH-
I’m guessing Henry is a ‘Black Adder’ fan,and being inspired by Baldrick,has come up with some ‘cunning plans’.
If he’s got Baldrick’s brains,I don’t think too many prem. defences will lose much sleep over this ‘new’ wolves goal threat.
p.s.- I saw O’Hara interviewed after the game’s highlights,and he seemed to be a bit unsure about how well the free-kick had been planned,and surprised that he hit the ball so perfectly.It was a quality goal,but I wouldn’t rely on these kind every week.
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Sir Terence, no worries about missing me mate, if I’d known about the car I’d have helped out. We are talking about another Great Escape Party at the Vine if we can arrange it. Kev’s promised to fly over a few donkeys off the Mallorcan beach but I’ve gone one better. I’ve invited the Wolves team!
TRBH: Al Read, fancy you being old enough to remember him. “Look at him, two left feet. Useless. Dunno why they pick him. Never get in my team. Look at that! He’s scored! Always said he was a good un”.
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44 Cyril.
I was quite young when I listened and he used to have me in stitches. I’ve recently listened to some of the shows again on BBC Radio 7 and unlike a lot of things they’ve held up very well and still make me laugh. Could be the onset of old timer’s disease though I suppose.
But there are an awful lot of blokes on here that could do an Al Read tribute act aren’t there? And even more on the Wolves site.
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