Matt Maher: Charlton draw was too little, too late for Eric Ramsay at West Brom - and he knew it

Tuesday’s performance against Charlton was unquestionably the best of the nine matches of which the 34-year-old took charge.

The trouble was it delivered only a 1-1 draw that, when placed alongside the other eight winless games which preceded it, was never going to be enough.

You sensed Ramsay knew it.

“This performance isn’t a problem,” he said. “In isolation, it is a dominant performance at home.

“But this performance isn’t in isolation. We are adding it to multiple draws, not getting enough wins, not getting over the line.

“It has the feeling of a step backwards.

“I know what the situation needs at the moment. It needs wins. It doesn’t need draws. We’ve obviously had too many of those.”

Too many draws, nowhere near enough points. For a man who faced the press as Albion boss for the first time not even six weeks previously, full of confidence, this has been a bruising, painful experience which has ultimately seen him earn a place in history as the club’s shortest-ever serving permanent boss.

Ramsay’s final meeting with the media finished with handshakes.

“Short and sharp,” he said, as he got up from his chair. It wasn’t obvious whether he was describing the nine-minute press conference, or his nine-match reign.

Just half-an-hour later, the axe had fallen. Ramsay left the press room and headed straight to the boardroom alongside assistant Dennis Lawrence, where Baggies owner Shilen Patel delivered the news he must surely have been expecting.

Patel had sat alongside Ramsay at that introductory press conference on January 15, expressing confidence in the club’s second head coach of the season.

The owner explained how the Baggies were now looking at it being a “20-game” campaign.

That number is now down to 12 and from being seven points clear of the bottom three when Ryan Mason was sacked and Ramsay appointed, Albion are now just one point above the safety line and only then because of Leicester’s six-point deduction.

Hoping the Premier League has better lawyers than the Foxes is no way to fight a relegation battle.

Patel must hope it is now a case, this season, of third head coach lucky.

Ramsay was supposed to deliver clarity in the wake of Mason’s sometimes muddled thinking but instead there has only been chaos.

In many ways the die felt cast once the Baggies were thumped 5-0 by Norwich in just his second match in charge, their heaviest-ever home defeat outside the top flight.

That immediately punctured belief in a head coach who, in his only previous post, had earned the reputation for fielding teams who knew how to keep clean sheets.

Another heavy defeat at Portsmouth prompted a change of system. Suddenly, Ramsay had the look of a man scrambling for answers he ultimately could not find.

Tuesday night meant he at least departed with his team having led a match.

George Campbell’s header, in the third minute of first half stoppage time, ended a 405-minute goal drought in the league.

It did not deliver a first win, due in part to Lyndon Dykes’ 70th minute equaliser following the one moment of quality Charlton produced on the night.

But this was also the one match where Ramsay had cause to feel considerably unfortunate.

Had Josh Maja or Isaac Price shown a little more composure in front of goal, when presented with golden chances with the score still 1-0, it is likely the head coach would have survived until at least Saturday’s trip to Oxford. 

The changes he made to the team, following Saturday’s 2-0 defeat to Coventry, by and large worked.

This was the one match of Ramsay’s reign where definitively, on the balance of play, you could describe Albion as the better team.

But it is also true there are few opponents - perhaps none - left on the schedule who will be so listless as the Addicks, who due to transport issues arrived half-an-hour behind schedule and were left to walk the final few hundred yards to the ground. 

And yet having 15 fewer attempts on goal than Albion, they somehow managed to scramble a result. It is difficult to imagine, were the flow of the match reversed, the Baggies doing the same.

Ramsay expressed frustration at his team’s profligacy, with the acknowledgement in previous matches chances hadn’t been so easy to come by.

This was too little, too late and his demeanour smacked of a man who knew precisely that.