Comment: West Brom showing West Midlands rivals how it's done

Albion have managed to win more points from 25 games in the Premier League than either Wolves or Aston Villa have in 31 games in the Championship.

Extend the net wider and you'll find Gianfranco Zola struggling at Birmingham City, Nottingham Forest in turmoil, and Leicester seemingly destined to join those sides in the second tier.

Stoke are the only Midlands club anywhere near the Baggies this season, and yet they didn't get anywhere near them at The Hawthorns earlier this month.

So the question is, what are Albion getting so right that the others aren't?

Last year, all four clubs in Birmingham and the Black Country underwent Chinese takeovers, but there's been one key difference.

The new regimes at Wolves, Villa, and Blues all opted to appoint exotic and (by some strange coincidence) Italian managers that have all failed.

With one win in 14, Zola looks destined for the scrapyard alongside Walter Zenga and Roberto Di Matteo.

Albion's decision-makers though decided to stick with Tony Pulis, the antithesis of the exotic, an experienced grinder with more than 1,000 games of management at all levels of English football under his belt.

Pulis deserves a lot of credit for what he's slowly managed to build up in B71 with shrewd recruitment, an emphasis on players with experience in English football, and an unwavering commitment to his own methods.

Even when the chips were down, he didn't change his tactics, he just dug in deeper.

But this turnaround would never have happened had Albion been as eager to make the same changes as their rivals.

That same pragmatism has served the Baggies well in the transfer market too.

Although some have criticised Albion's business over the past two windows for being underwhelming, Matt Phillips, Allan Nyom, Nacer Chadli and Jake Livermore are the last four permanent additions the club spent money on.

All four are now important first-team players and all four look like staying regulars for years to come.

Villa have spent more than £70million since going down, whereas the Baggies have spent just over £30m in the same time-frame, less than their claret and blue rivals forked out for three strikers, Jonathan Kodjia, Ross McCormack and Scott Hogan.

Wolves haven't spent nearly as much, but they have employed the same scatter-gun approach to recruitment.

Both sides struggling in the Championship have large squads in desperate need of trimming whereas Albion's is a tight-knit unit working wonders with limited numbers.

The key component to this is who is holding the purse-strings. Mega-rich Fosun Group are in charge of Wolves, and there's an uncomfortable relationship with super-agent Jorge Mendes rumbling away in the background.

Villa chairman Tony Xia may be box office on Twitter but there are still big question marks over his ability to run a football club.

Albion, meanwhile, have John Williams, former long-term chairman of Blackburn Rovers.

Guochuan Lai may be the owner, but Williams is the decision-maker. Unlike those in charge elsewhere, he has experience running a football club, and so far he's quietly impressed.

Not only has he managed to get a healthy amount of cash for Saido Berahino, the decision to give Pulis a contract extension now looks like a master-stroke.

By the end of his tenure, a lot of fans had lost patience with Jeremy Peace, and there's no doubt he made an awful lot of money out of the club.

But Peace pulled the plug on a similar Chinese takeover a year earlier because he was 'not satisfied that the interests of West Bromwich Albion would have been best served'.

The last season under Peace may have been a grind, but if this season is a sign of things to come over the next few years, it was worth it.

And by lining up Williams to replace him, Peace left the club in safe hands and ensured a smooth transition. It may not be exotic, but it sure is working.