Matt Maher: A January of potentially era-defining decisions at West Brom and Shrewsbury

For Albion and Shrewsbury Town, this particular January has seen calls which could come to define much more than one campaign.

Two clubs, two divisions apart, have made two managerial appointments which, depending on their success or failure, may well shape the next few years

In the short-term, two relegation battles is what those appointments are facing up to.

That was certainly not the plan for Eric Ramsay, when he decided to leave the relative safety of Minnesota United and the MLS to take the reins at The Hawthorns.

The "dreaded R-word” never got a mention when the 34-year-old sat alongside Baggies owner Shilen Patel at his unveiling earlier in the month.

Yet not even three weeks into the job, it can no longer be ignored. A return of just one point from Ramsay’s three matches in charge, coupled with the resurgence of rivals in the same area of the table, has Albion sat just two places and three points above the drop zone heading into Saturday’s game at Portsmouth, the team one place below them in the standings.

Nothing will be decided, in either direction, by the result at Fratton Park. But even with more than a third of the season still to play, there’s no doubt the fixture falls firmly into the “six-pointer” category. The question is whether Ramsay and his coaching staff have been able to build on any momentum from that last-gasp leveller at Derby last time out?

This past week has been their first chance to take a breath and work in real detail with the squad since the head coach’s arrival.

As baptisms into the Championship go, it has been rather brutal, a late home defeat to Middlesbrough followed by a thrashing from Norwich before the draw with Derby at least stopped the rot. Ramsay can no longer be in any doubt what he has let himself in for and the hope must be he is a quick learner. 

Nowhere will fingers be crossed more tightly than in the boardroom. Next month will mark the two-year anniversary of Bilkul’s takeover, the majority of which the US-based owners have spent sorting out the off-field mess they inherited from Guochuan Lai.

On the field, however, things have not gone to plan since the sudden exit of Carlos Corberan on Christmas Eve, 2024. 

Ramsay is their third appointment since, after Tony Mowbray and Ryan Mason both failed to make it past the 30-game mark. It is one they desperately need to work. The cost of failure is simply too great.

The same applies at Shrewsbury where, in Gavin Cowan, the club have moved for a head coach a full decade older than the 34-year-old Ramsay, their one-time academy boss.

Except Cowan, despite his greater years, has no prior experience of full-time football management. Indeed, his time in the professional game extends to just a few years as a player with Shrewsbury and Kidderminster a couple of decades ago.

The fact he and his new assistant, Dave Edwards, co-host a now presumably discontinued podcast in which the club’s travails have been extensively discussed, adds another slightly surreal twist to the story. 

This is certainly not an appointment which hasn’t raised a few eyebrows.

Yet that does not mean it is a bad one. On the subject of experience, for instance, Shrewsbury’s recent history might suggest it can be over-rated. 

The three most recent incumbents of the head coach’s office - Paul Hurst, Gareth Ainsworth and Michael Appleton - had plenty of it. All it achieved is one relegation and the very real threat of another, with the team currently sat 21st in League Two, just two points clear of safety.

Cowan, meanwhile, arrives on the back of an impressive job done at Brackley Town, where he achieved promotion and this season had the part-timers placed 15th in the National League Premier, competing against clubs with significantly bigger budgets.

Sure, the switch to full-time may take a little adaptation, yet the basics of coaching and man-management remain the same.

Any reporter who has covered the top levels of non-league knows there are plenty of part-time managers with the qualities to succeed in the full-time game. Chris Wilder and Danny Cowley are among two of the more notable examples in recent times. 

The issue is such managers rarely get offered the chance to prove it, or even want it, such is the heightened risk of failure when, in most cases, accepting the opportunity requires giving up a full-time job elsewhere. For such managers, it is far more than merely putting your reputation on the line.

Cowan has a slight advantage in that his full-time job was already based in football but this is still a bold move, from both himself and Shrewsbury, with plenty on the line.

Away from the immediate concerns on the pitch, there is clearly a bigger story here involving the ownership and potential sale of the club.

Just how much the latter depends on the former is debatable. Being in non-league didn’t stop Wrexham from being spotted by Hollywood A-Listers, after all.

Yet you always want to be building from a position of strength and relegation from the Football League will always carry with it a significant loss of prestige. Neither is the top tier of non-league anything like the same division Shrewsbury found themselves in more than two decades ago.

Just as at The Hawthorns, the stakes could hardly be higher.