Have we gone backwards?

[ericlegrisly]

Less than a year ago West Bromwich Albion shoved five up the Champions of the whole world Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.

Four of our starting 11 that day started tonight.  The other seven didn't.

Our midfield four that day was Phillips, Yokuslu, Maitland Niles and Pereira.

Today it was Molumby, Mowatt and Reach.

I think we might be in the shit.

[Lurker#3]

Arf... that midfield comparison is fucking grim.

And it wasn't good enough for the prem back then.

[Duffers]

We’ve been slowly going backwards since the later days of Pulis. A shambolic transfer policy that mainly focused on loans and old men and has left us with a squad full of has beens and never will bes. Years of neglect are coming home to roost now.

It’s telling that with the exception of Periera and Johnstone we haven’t actually owned any of our best players of the last few years - Gayle, Barnes, AMN, Yokusulu… instead we have nice long contracts to the same failures we’ve always had.

[MancBaggie]

We’ve been slowly going backwards since the later days of Pulis. A shambolic transfer policy that mainly focused on loans and old men and has left us with a squad full of has beens and never will bes. Years of neglect are coming home to roost now.

It’s telling that with the exception of Periera and Johnstone we haven’t actually owned any of our best players of the last few years - Gayle, Barnes, AMN, Yokusulu… instead we have nice long contracts to the same failures we’ve always had.

Good post

[Sliced]

We’ve been slowly going backwards since the later days of Pulis. A shambolic transfer policy that mainly focused on loans and old men and has left us with a squad full of has beens and never will bes. Years of neglect are coming home to roost now.

It’s telling that with the exception of Periera and Johnstone we haven’t actually owned any of our best players of the last few years - Gayle, Barnes, AMN, Yokusulu… instead we have nice long contracts to the same failures we’ve always had.

Absolutely. The deterioration could have been earlier than that had Pulis not stabilised us a bit after the transfer window where we signed about 7 players all of which turned out to be crap (under Irvine).

[Baggeridgebaggy]

We’ve been slowly going backwards since the later days of Pulis. A shambolic transfer policy that mainly focused on loans and old men and has left us with a squad full of has beens and never will bes. Years of neglect are coming home to roost now.

It’s telling that with the exception of Periera and Johnstone we haven’t actually owned any of our best players of the last few years - Gayle, Barnes, AMN, Yokusulu… instead we have nice long contracts to the same failures we’ve always had.

Not true 

Under Pulis spine was Foster, Evans, Dawson, Fletcher & Rondon 

Add to that Gibbs, Hezagi, Rodriguez, Chadli, Berinhino. Phillips

Hardly loans & old me 

Recruitment issues stem from Premier League purchases under Bilic & some of the really average players we’ve brought in this season

[Cheshire East Baggie]

We’ve been slowly going backwards since the later days of Pulis. A shambolic transfer policy that mainly focused on loans and old men and has left us with a squad full of has beens and never will bes. Years of neglect are coming home to roost now.

It’s telling that with the exception of Periera and Johnstone we haven’t actually owned any of our best players of the last few years - Gayle, Barnes, AMN, Yokusulu… instead we have nice long contracts to the same failures we’ve always had.

Not true 

Under Pulis spine was Foster, Evans, Dawson, Fletcher & Rondon 

Add to that Gibbs, Hezagi, Rodriguez, Chadli, Berinhino. Phillips

Hardly loans & old me 

Recruitment issues stem from Premier League purchases under Bilic & some of the really average players we’ve brought in this season

Duffers is right. Pulis neglected midfield in particular. Fletcher was a quick fix that worked. Barry was a lazy attempt to repeat the trick which failed. Livermore came in on Pulis's watch. There's no-one in your Pulis player list to match Dorrans, Greening, Koren, Gera or the ageing Brunt and Mozza. And where are the Gregan and McInnes types? All of our best midfielders have been loans in recent years.

Special mention for Bilic though, thinking that Livermore and Sawyers added up to a functioning midfield unit. I can't blame Pulis for that.

[Baggeridgebaggy]

We’ve been slowly going backwards since the later days of Pulis. A shambolic transfer policy that mainly focused on loans and old men and has left us with a squad full of has beens and never will bes. Years of neglect are coming home to roost now.

It’s telling that with the exception of Periera and Johnstone we haven’t actually owned any of our best players of the last few years - Gayle, Barnes, AMN, Yokusulu… instead we have nice long contracts to the same failures we’ve always had.

Not true 

Under Pulis spine was Foster, Evans, Dawson, Fletcher & Rondon 

Add to that Gibbs, Hezagi, Rodriguez, Chadli, Berinhino. Phillips

Hardly loans & old me 

Recruitment issues stem from Premier League purchases under Bilic & some of the really average players we’ve brought in this season

Duffers is right. Pulis neglected midfield in particular. Fletcher was a quick fix that worked. Barry was a lazy attempt to repeat the trick which failed. Livermore came in on Pulis's watch. There's no-one in your Pulis player list to match Dorrans, Greening, Koren, Gera or the ageing Brunt and Mozza. And where are the Gregan and McInnes types? All of our best midfielders have been loans in recent years.

Special mention for Bilic though, thinking that Livermore and Sawyers added up to a functioning midfield unit. I can't blame Pulis for that.

The squad Pulis assembled & partly inherited should never have been relegated and since then the club has received over £200m  taking into account player sales & TV revenue 

That £200m has nearly all been spent - awful recruitment over the last 2/3 years has got us where we are now. We’ve got promoted and have ended up with a worse squad this season than the one that took us up

[TETLEY74]

We’ve been slowly going backwards since the later days of Pulis. A shambolic transfer policy that mainly focused on loans and old men and has left us with a squad full of has beens and never will bes. Years of neglect are coming home to roost now.

It’s telling that with the exception of Periera and Johnstone we haven’t actually owned any of our best players of the last few years - Gayle, Barnes, AMN, Yokusulu… instead we have nice long contracts to the same failures we’ve always had.

Absolutely. The deterioration could have been earlier than that had Pulis not stabilised us a bit after the transfer window where we signed about 7 players all of which turned out to be crap (under Irvine).

In all seriousness how many of our players will attract interest from other clubs and go for decent money????

[Pfister]

We have undeniably been going backwards for a while now. We never seem to get a “new manager bounce”. My opinion on where we are now is that we either miss out on promotion, and slowly drift into (at best) the mid table, or we do sneak promotion, fail to invest in the team (seriously would need 7 or 8 quality players to be remotely competitive -ain’t gonna happen), and be PL whipping boys for a season. Rinse and repeat..