Martin Swain: West Bromwich Albion look like a club divided

From one perspective, "Footballers fight after rubbish result" is no big deal. File under "Footballer sleeps with blonde" and "Footballer buys Merc" etc.

It was ever thus and the only folk who get truly wound up about it are newspaper circulation managers.

And possibly the player's wife.

What we are waiting to learn now is the full cost of this corrosion of a once rock-solid base. Already the players' unease at Mel's strategy and set-up has bubbled to the surface.

A divide between the core of players, who had established Albion in the Premier League's top 10, and the team's newer elements who have failed to live up to their wage packets is said to be widening.

Mel, pretty much isolated and in the struggle of the moment abandoning his efforts to conduct his business in English, is a coach who looks increasingly in the right place at the wrong time.

Incredibly, and despite winning only five games all season, Albion are still clear of the bottom three.

In fact – even better – they could lose at Norwich this weekend and still won't drop below the line. Sunderland's defeat last night and the Baggies' superior goal difference, the final remnant of the structure Roy Hodgson left behind, will see to that. But the flip side is that many Albion fans will expect them to be beaten this weekend because they have seen precious little under this confused alliance between a Spanish-infused vision and Premier League reality to suggest otherwise.

Results have been rotten – just two wins from the 16 games since the abrupt sacking of Steve Clarke, one each for Keith Downing and Mel. Not what was expected and not what should have come from a season which saw Albion bloated with attacking and midfield talent by the time it entered its second month. That no stream-lined first XI – or even 13, 14 – has ever emerged is one of the great failures of the campaign.

And now we have this argy-bargy around Berahino, the primary culprit in a staggering collapse of professional discipline on the pitch in the final moments of the Cardiff City match. One thing we can be sure of is that Berahino will not ever again go for a Hollywood pass when there are tough, Premier League points at stake.

Regrettably, there is a view circulating that the youngster's meteoric rise and fat new contract have left him getting a little ahead of himself in which case the retribution meted out in the heat of Saturday's post-match anguish was ever likely. But equally we are hearing this is no two-minute bust-up after which the parties apologised and shook hands, as is the usual protocol in these testosterone-fuelled dressing room bust-ups.

The skirmish points to a deeper division which feeds the view that Mel's uncertain leadership has further loosened the rivets of a once unified group of players.

Albion fans not wishing to believe that five years or more of steady growth was unravelling before them have taken succour from the speeches of unity from respected figures. Jonas Olsson was one and after Saturday, Graham Dorrans another. "The players will stick together," said the Scot. But it sounds more and more like company-drafted spin than any accurate comment on the mood of the camp.

There are other worrying elements to this trail. As much as chairman Jeremy Peace will surely want to know precisely what happened in this after-match flashpoint, he has already been around long enough to know who was so eager to get the story out into the public domain.

It's not the first time Albion's dirty washing has been pegged out while still dripping wet and offers another disturbing reflection of what has become a season of increasing anguish. Football codes usually demand these things stay "in the dressing room"; that isn't happening at the moment and as a result bathes this campaign in an even more troubled light. Some folk are only too eager to add to Albion's troubles.

History will surely show the loss of Hodgson and Dan Ashworth to be particularly cruel blows from which it has been understandably difficult to recover.

But the fudged and flawed transfer policy of the summer, the signing of the troublesome Anelka, the sacking of Clarke and 28-day delay naming his replacement and the decision to hand the role to a man with no previous experience of the Premier League mid-way through a season already in trouble...each a brick assembling a wall from behind which Albion are losing sight of all it has achieved.

Sometimes these explosions can be cathartic, clearing the air. It is 10 years ago that Thomas Gaardsoe got into a punch-up on the bus in the Anfield car park when an enraged member of Gary Megson's staff heard him issue his immortal line: "Taxi for Megson."

Eight months later – admittedly after the regime change – the Albion throng were delirious at The Great Escape.

But where they will be seven games from now is not so certain and this latest signal from within hardly soothes the collective anxiety of their public.