Lewis Cox: No place to hide for Shilen Patel as West Brom plummet
Saturday marks two years since Bilkul bought Albion, yet it threatens to be an unhappy anniversary.
Shilen Patel and his associates must wonder just how things have gone so badly wrong over the last 12 months, not to mention the last six weeks in particular.
Bilkul's third permanent head coach appointment in a year was a disaster of historical proportion.
The hapless Eric Ramsay was very clearly the wrong man at the wrong time.
At the head coach's unveiling on January 15, Patel expressed hope it "would be years" before he had to find another boss. Instead, it didn't even take two months for a new search to start.
Ramsay's miserable 44-day reign was record-breaking for all the wrong reasons. The shortest tenure of any permanent Hawthorns manager or head coach, the 34-year-old is the only one to have left without a single victory. One result which is on his record is the heaviest home defeat outside the top flight in the club's proud history.
Ramsay suffered public humiliation as Albion, somehow, fell towards the trapdoor in the second tier.
The young, up-and-coming head coach, in a similar ilk to Ryan Mason, was a 'project' appointment to be made last summer, when Ramsay and Mason vied for the hotseat.
