Mogga's Touch. March 5th 2025.

46 days.

Well it's two more days than Cloughie lasted at Leeds, but it's long enough to clearly start to make your mark on a team in terms of identity and team selection.

The Mogga touch.

The timing of Tony Mowbray's six month, thankfully, positive check up recovering from the ravages of a bowel cancer battle, could not have worked better for us.

He was ready and so was us,

It seems almost surreal, looking back, we were a Work Visa away for an ancillary coaching staff member, from appointing the now, still unemployed, Raphael Wicky.

The ovations Mowbray received at both The Hawthorns and at Boro in his first two games of his second WBA reign, were emotional and fully deserved, but you could clearly see Mowbray's urge to express his coaching style and philosophies in the environment he knows best and feels most comfortable.

The training ground.

46 game seasons are marathons, particularly in a Fartlek type of schedule of intensity and then gaps to breathe. 

Or indeed, in Mogga's case, crucially, to coach..

Midweek games are a way of life in The Championship, but travel and putting your stamp on your team on the training ground don't go hand in hand.

February saw a couple of those one week coaching windows, where the Mogga philosophy can really come into play, and decisions made on players character as well as strengths and weaknesses are made through evidence.

For Mowbray, flexibility in thinking as well as formation has always been his hallmark, the horses for courses quote could have been written for him. 

Teams are designed to match or exploit opponents on a game by game basis being the mantra.

Predicting a Mowbray XI is a futile exercise.

Seeing Jon Swift start v Leeds was an unexpected call, but ultimately a decision that paid off.

For Mowbray it’s not the past, but whose skillset best meets the challenge set.

Now.

As a player, each week in training is all about becoming attuned with the Mowbray way and creating an opportunity for yourself to fit in with the bosses plan for the opposition.

Some players will thrive and meet the challenge head on, others will have their mettle tested, confidence may take a dent, a test of character as much as ability.

In the first six games of this new Mowbray era, NINETEEN different players have started games for ‘the Albion’.

You WILL get a chance, it's all about taking it.

The early days for Mogga are perhaps not all about winning or losing, but more about learning, game on game, as the Mowbray blueprint becomes clearer and clearer, the high point for me so far, the overall team performance away at high flying Leeds United, last week.

In rising to the challenge of our most difficult opponents this season, you could see the increased flexibility in the Mowbray formations.

The symmetry of coordination in passing between the lines and a concerted pressing.

The increased trust in the system.

To reach that familiarity and level of performance, you need solid reps on the training ground and a full week's preparation.

That was the background to the Leeds game, and you could clearly see the improvement.

For Mowbray, the defensive foundations under the Corberan regime can certainly be deemed a strength, but it’s parlaying this philosophy over his own more expressive style of play, allied to incorporating new talent and replacing outgoing players.

Not easy.

But compared to the challenges Tony Mowbray faced in his personal life a year ago, simply nothing.

Replacing the financially understandable rhetoric of selling Alex Palmer would in most cases be very difficult, but you build a squad for possibilities such as this.

Palmer had seven loans during his early days at WBA to hone his goalkeeping skills, so in comparison, the four loan spells Josh Griffiths has experienced seems negligible. 

At every club Josh has been loaned to, he has gained rave reviews, but since his debut with the Baggies in 2020, he has only started ten games.

This recent loan recall from Bristol Rovers may have seemingly given Griffiths the green light, but since Palmer’s departure, the gloves have gone to Joe Wildsmith.

Keeping clean sheets is what Joe Wildsmith was all about at Derby, twenty in forty six games last season in Division 1 was an impressive stat.

However, if we are to maintain our recent, poor goal scoring ratio of just over a goal, [1.16] per game, as our last six games have produced, the imperative need of a defensive clean sheet is even more important.

Wildsmith, in my mind exhibits a similar style and traits, to the legendary goalkeeper, where problems over a work permit stymied Big Ron’s plan to bring him to The Hawthorns.

Bruce Grobbelaar.

Wildsmith looks at times a very confident shot stopper, but his decision making at committing to crosses, is the polar opposite of confidence.

Being a keeper is a ruthless test of the trust in your abilities, and replacing Palmer was never going to be easy, but it’s crucial Wildsmith gains a greater assurance in his decision making. 

Unless our goal scoring record improves markedly, chasing multiple goals to win games is going to have be a radical change from recent performances.

But the odd dichotomy is, we are now blessed with a surfeit of attacking options.

Few Championship teams this season have an attacking strike force boasting a serial scorer over many years in this division as Adam Armstrong, plus the much anticipated return of Josh Maja to full fitness?

As a potential front pair, this a combination that could really thrive, allied to the wing threat of Tom Fellows and Mikey Johnston, who will both hopefully start attacking on the outside again to ballast to the seemingly preferred option of cutting inside, now they have targets as viable as this pair of strikers.

Add in, Spurs teenage prospect, Will Lankshear, and the beyond welcome return of injured striker Daryl Dike, whose ovation from the Baggies faithful, coming off the bench for his two cameo roles at the end of recent games, was simply moving to hear and fully deserved. 

The way Tom Fellows ends this season may well have long term ramifications for the club.

The evidence speaks volumes.

Fellows still has the most assists in this division this season, and at his very best, at times in this level, is unplayable.

The pace, the drop of the shoulder, the step over, the pursuit of the space and angle to deliver the most inviting cross.

Mowbray, gently toyed with the idea of how brilliant Fellows could be, with a little edge to his game, the strut, the self belief, so many gifted players possess, and some, nowhere near Tom’s level, try and perceive they posssess.

But for Fellows and others, Mowbray has sought different starters for games, based on the formation he feels fits for the challenge.

Shoehorning the impressive talent of Issac Price into that wide right position last week v Leeds being a classic case.

Confidence is everything, in any sport, at any level.

Karlan Grant is another prime example, who exhibited that strut, the inner confidence, of what he labelled himself as being, ‘a different animal’ this season, and indeed he was.

But confidence isn’t a tap you can turn off and on, it’s usually sprung by  performance on or off the bench.

Since injury, Grant has struggled to find that role or inner confidence and simply put, you cannot see Grant or Mikey Johnston starting in the same team.

And Johnston is the preferred option.

Good teams are spoilt for choice, and in certain positions, we are.

It’s the type of competition, promotion winning teams must have, and for quite some time years we’ve not had.

In recent years, at times, it was almost too easy to keep the shirt.

Under Mowbray, those days are long gone.

Fellows' recent pivotal moment came in the latter stages of the Leeds game, where the margins of error can be much smaller, depending on the opponent.

Tom’s poor first touch, on that late breakaway for a possible winner, to choose to go inside rather than outside from the onrushing Leeds cover defence, opened the possibility for the desperate lunge tackle by Leeds defender, Joe Rodon, one of the few players in The Championship capable of such a covering block.

A fully confident Fellows is key to a promotion run, and indeed, if we are to sell our home grown winger at the end of the season, the higher the price, the better for the balancing of the books.

Peaking now, would be massive for us, in more ways than one.

We cannot expect the Patel family to put 25 Million annually into the club, to merely keep us afloat and balance the books.

Under Patel, we have gained a generous, transparent thinking Chairman, who also sees the bigger picture, and is in for the long run.

Visibility over the invisibility of the Lai years, has only enhanced his reputation with the Baggies faithful.

One of the clearest hallmarks of Patel’s short tenure has been investment in younger talent, with sell on appreciation value, not drop off depreciation, on inflated wages, as was our recipe for long term disaster.

‘Savvy trading’ as Patel labelled and encouraged, is not a perfect science, but overall, the talent revealed so far under his tenure, has been, in the best cases, truly sensational.

Torbjorn Heggem, looked like a Luke Littler bullseye, the moment, at least from my eyes, I saw his highlights video.

Scandinavia is such a reliable port of call for defenders, maybe it’s that well earned sense of dependability, work ethic and seemingly clean living that makes players from this region, generally the most reliable of characters.

From the pre signing highlights video, Heggem’s athleticism and technique stood out a mile, add in the coaching nous and influence of his coach at IF Brommapojkarna, the brilliant ex Juventus defender Olof Melberg, you could easily see a player of such rich potential, that wonderfully,  a club in our financial constraints could actually afford.

I struggle to think of a better Half Million investment in recent decades by The Baggies?

From starting at left back to settling into the left sided central defensive role, Heggem's consistency and high level of play has been wonderful.

The perfect match for Heggem in the WBA squad, has been in the guise of the return of Kyle Bartley, who Mowbray described, ‘adds a voice at the back, a presence and a manliness to the team’.

Obviously Bartley can be a checkerboard of emotions, his ridiculous, selfish in terms of the team, red card v Sheffield Wednesday, can be something that cannot possibly happen again.

I honestly can see Premier League bids coming in for Heggem, that we’ll have to fend off or possibly accept during the August Window, with the likes of at the very least, a team who are an oasis for all things Scandinavian, Brentford, being one of the possible suitors.

There could be other bids, for a 26 year old, who has been so lightly played, in a career of less than 200 games.

In the right circumstances and formation, I think 

Heggem would be a truly brilliant left sided defender in a back three, and who knows if Norway have that plan for him long term, as a Heggem, Haaland, Norwegian team, plot their course to breaking their 20 year gap from qualifying for the World Cup?

A similar scenario faces Northern Ireland and their star, young talent, Issac Price, who has proven to be the epitome of the words Mogga stated in late January,

‘Buy young, hungry, talented players and keep adding to them’.

Even the Northern Ireland FA expressed a sense of admiration on the Price signing, stating ‘West Brom, you’ve signed a good one’, and in just four appearances for The Albion, you can clearly see the wisdom of those quotes.

Price, simply is like no other Albion player in the squad, in his role as a free running, flexible, attacking positional player, with such vision and early awareness of the most subtle and inviting pass.

At just 21 years old, Price is match and character proven from a two year spell in Belgium, and we have a player who will simply get better and better, the type you can eventually perhaps build a team around, as he develops his physicality, an inevitability as you reach your mid 20’s.

Ironically, Heggem and Price’s World Cup qualifying route has a certain overlap, the top seed being decided by the result of Germany v Italy, in Northern Ireland’s case, the winner, the loser becomes the top seed in Norway’s group.

To allow such skilful players like Price to flourish, you need the proverbial engine room, and it’s well known to all who read my articles, how much faith I have in the Molumby, Mowatt combination, and of course their roles to dismantle and dominate an opposition midfield is so key to a bid for the playoffs.

Every game, at this business end of the season is vital, and our earlier games in March, post Leeds, offers two seemingly winnable games at home v QPR and later Hull City, sandwiched in the middle, with a visit to the doyens of defensive excellence, Burnley.

If ever an international break for preparation is required, the March window will be the precursor for the most important five game stretch of games, in my opinion of the season for West Brom.

So called six point games, define seasons.

Tony Pulis, in his Baggies days, back in the Premier League, targeted these types of fixtures, the rationale of getting an advantage over immediate rivals and giving a platform for survival and beyond.

Just over a decade from Pulis’s original Albion arrival, in January 2015, we now face a similar six pointer scenario's, in a stretch of five games over twenty days.

Norwich City, Bristol City , Coventry City, away.

Sunderland, Watford at home.

Sunderland, financial woes apart, are a shoe-in for the playoffs, but the other four teams are, as I type this, are in a five point cluster, between the resurgent Coventry in 5th and Norwich in 11th.

The current form is certainly with Coventry, four wins in a row, [against mid table opposition, but still impressive], and are now above us in 5th.

That type of momentum is so vital at this stage in the season, in a division where you may well play a team who has accrued 20 more points in the regular season than yourselves , over a two game playoff, for a trip to Wembley and the possible financial windfall that the Premier League provides.

I’ll look in more detail at that five game, six point bonanza or banana skin in the next Baggiebard article, in early April.

But for now as a club, rest assured, we can look at the future with much more clarity and confidence.

Whether it’s a season too early for promotion, we’ll see, but the experience in the challenge of first making the playoffs, with an increasingly young team, will be fundamental to how we perform next season.

Experience is golden.

I think, realistically, that could be our year, when Mogga’s touch actually turns to gold.