Tottenham v West Brom - Baggies embark on life after Pulis

Will a cloud have been lifted, will the shackles be thrown off? Or will those confidence issues remain, do the problems run deeper?

It may be difficult to tell away at Tottenham; Tuesday night’s home game with Newcastle is likely to be a far fairer barometer.

So perhaps this game should be seen as a free hit, for everyone involved. There will certainly be a lighter mood among the 3,500 travelling fans than there was at Huddersfield three weeks ago.

As it stands, it will be Gary Megson walking out at Wembley with the Baggies – who would have predicted that six months ago?

But even though the stand-in boss has a unique rapport with Albion fans for taking them into the Premier League at the start of the century, in many ways he is cut from the same cloth as Pulis.

“You can’t just wave a magic wand and say, ‘right I’m confident today’,” said Megson earlier this week.

“There has to be starting point in that process, it has got to be something easy enough, your work rate, your running, then your natural gifts you hope will come through.”

Megson may have mellowed in his five years away from football but his central tenets remain.

“Tottenham are a fantastic side,” said Megson. “I thought their performance against Real Madrid was brilliant, top class.

“We’re under no illusions, like we said to the players at half-time on Saturday, you’re 3-0 down to one of the best teams in Europe, what do you do?

“You either roll your sleeves up and have a go at it or you give in. So we’ve got to make sure we roll our sleeves up.”

Not all of the players did that on Saturday, but with potential future bosses waiting in the wings, there will be no excuses for dropped heads this weekend.

Megson is not expected to make wholesale changes to the team, but there are signs he might tweak a few things and there could be a change up front, where he’s identified a problem.

“What’s happened to us is we’re not creating enough chances,” he said. “The ones we do create, when we don’t score, we put ourselves on the back foot all the time.

“We’re getting pushed back defensively but my view is we’re not doing enough at the other end, we’re not retaining the ball, we’re not keeping the ball in the right half of the pitch.

“We’ve got to try to do something about that. We have been trying in the last month or so. But talking about it and delivering it are two different things.”

Megson calims this is not an audition, he is simply looking after the reins until told otherwise.

His affection for the club, and its fans, means he is happy to do so, but he is aware the club has evolved since those heady days in 2002.

“Since I was here I don’t think anybody has experienced that (relationship with the fans) because they couldn’t do,” he said.

“Some manager at some point was going to take them up – having been out of the limelight for 18 years – someone was going to do that.

“When I arrived, gates were 8,000, when I left they were 28,000, the place was rocking because it was new.

“It’s not new anymore. They’ve been in the Premier League for quite a long time, which makes it as difficult, because you’ve got people who want to be doing more and more while clubs like Manchester City spend an extra billion pound on players. That’s the competition we’re in now.”

Nacer Chadli (thigh), James Morrison (Achilles) and Craig Dawson (knee) are all still sidelined.

Albion's key man - Claudio Yacob

The Argentinian could keep his place in the team after impressing off the bench last weekend. He will need to be at his level best to stamp any authority on an opposition with attacking midfielders like Eriksen and Alli.

Tottenham's dangerman - Harry Kane

Who else? He has 14 goals from 16 games in all competitions already this season and more goals in 2017 than the whole of the Albion team combined. When he’s on song, he’s unstoppable, and even though he was off the pace against Arsenal, he was back on the scoresheet against Borussia Dortmund in midweek.

Likely line-ups

Albion (4-4-1-1): Foster, Gibbs, Evans, Hegazi, Nyom, McClean, Livermore, Yacob, Phillips, Rodriguez, Rondon.

Spurs (3-5-2): Lloris, Dier, Sanchez, Vertonghen, Trippier, Dembele, Sissoko, Eriksen, Davies, Alli, Kane.