Express & Star

Southampton vs West Brom: Evolutionary process in need of a jolt

Those two wins at the start of the season seem a long time ago now.

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Tony Pulis is in need of a win.

Albion haven’t tasted victory in the league since the middle of August, when the sun was shining on them both literally and metaphorically.

Now the nights are drawing in, the temperature has dropped, and so has the mood. November will be soon upon us and the Baggies need a win to lift the cloud.

They’ve come close on several occasions, but have managed to throw away leads late on against Stoke, Watford and Leicester.

If they’d seen out the last 10 seconds of the Watford game as well as one other, they’d be sitting pretty in fourth place, smiling at a fantastic start to the campaign after a promising window.

But you get nowhere with ifs and buts and, sooner or later, this team needs to start delivering on all that promise.

A victory will ease the pressure on a head coach who has three wins in 20 league games, a worse record than the one that brought about Craig Shakespeare’s demise.

But you can almost always guarantee Pulis to grind out enough points to keep a team safe and Albion are currently in the top half.

More important than the destination now is the journey.

There are tentative signs that this work in progress is starting to evolve into a team that at least attempts to play the ball on the deck, even if it doesn’t yet look completely comfortable with it.

Nacer Chadli’s return to the side should help with that, but the line-up is crying out for a No.10 behind Salomon Rondon to fill the gap going forward being unnecessarily created by Pulis’s insistence of playing three holding midfielders.

This week though, the biggest concern is further back, where Pulis has been given a headache he’s not had to deal with for more than a year.

Boaz Myhill’s minor hamstring strain has left Albion staring at a potential keeper crisis with Ben Foster already sidelined following a knee injury picked up in his back garden.

Not that Albion can afford to let this game slide by without taking any points back to the Midlands.

They have Manchester City, Chelsea and Spurs coming up in the next four fixtures, so just like their early-season form, they need to make hay while the sun shines.

The club’s modus operandi under Guochuan Lai has been evolution rather than revolution and that pragmatism was something assistant head coach Ben Garner echoed recently.

“We want to take that forward but you’ve got to do that without losing the platform underneath,” he said. “It’s probably frustrating for the fans at times but it’s easier said than done.

“If you try and jump forward too quickly you can come crashing down. It’s a case of evolving daily, weekly, and keep progressing while gelling the team together.”

But at some point, the fish have got to start growing legs, because there’s no point being left underwater forever, being too scared to find out what’s possible above the surface.

Albion's key man - Jay Rodriguez

The £12m summer signing will be dying to impress on his return to St Mary’s, and he could use a goal after a bright start to the season. Needs to be played nearer the opposition’s goal, where his finishing touch can flourish.

Likely line-ups

Albion (4-2-3-1): Myhill, Dawson, Evans, Hegazi, Gibbs, Barry, Krychowiak, Phillips, Rodriguez, Chadli, Rondon.

Subs: Palmer, Nyom, McAuley, Yacob, Livermore, Brunt, McClean.

Southampton (4-4-2): Forster, Soares, Yoshida, van Dijk, Bertrand, Tadic, Romeu, Lemina, Redmond, Gabbiadini, Long.

Subs: Hoedt, Davis, McCarthy, Ward-Prowse, Boufal, McQueen, Austin.