Jonny Drury and Lewis Cox analyse West Brom's defeat to Southampton.
The home side fellow behind early on as Ryan Fraser volleyed the Saints into the lead.
Albion rallied though and had a strong penalty shout turned down.
But despite having spells in the second period they failed to test the visitors - who sealed the win through David Brooks' strike late on.
The home side fellow behind early on as Ryan Fraser volleyed the Saints into the lead.
Albion rallied though and had a strong penalty shout turned down.
But despite having spells in the second period they failed to test the visitors - who sealed the win through David Brooks' strike late on.
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SportsTranscript
00:00 Hello, Baggies fans. Welcome to Express and Start.com. My name is Jonny Drew. I'm here
00:11 at the Hawthorns after a disappointing 2-0 defeat for Albion. The last 24 hours have
00:18 been pretty positive with the news of the takeover from Shillen Patel, but a disappointing
00:22 defeat on the field for Albion alongside Albion correspondent and famous new Sky Sports pundit
00:28 Lewis Cox. I'm surprised he'll talk to me now. He's been on the big time.
00:31 It's wearing thin already. Believe me, it's wearing thin.
00:33 It's not going to end anytime soon, I'm afraid. Coxie, I think we'll start on the field matters
00:39 and then we'll talk briefly off field because we believe that the new owner Shillen Patel
00:43 is about 100 yards back that way.
00:45 We are literally stood 50 metres from Shillen Patel.
00:48 Potentially, I'm going to check what cattle's called, Brad.
00:50 And his wife as well. We can just about hear their voices, but that's interesting, isn't
00:55 it?
00:56 On the field, Coxie, for me, just Albion maybe a few under par performers from some key players,
01:02 but I think Savanta were just too good for Albion.
01:04 Yeah, yeah, definitely. Best side we've seen in this season.
01:08 Yeah, going forward.
01:09 Yeah, I mean, Albion did a job on Leeds here, didn't they? And deserved it, I think. The
01:14 Leicester game should have been a draw and obviously lost late on, pushed them well.
01:19 Obviously, Ipswich were taken care of. But yes, Albion were under par, no question.
01:24 They weren't at top level. Maybe there are reasons that we can get into, but worse Southampton
01:30 rip roaring.
01:31 I don't know. Russell Martins called that their best win of the season, which says a
01:34 lot about Albion, I think. And Albion here, Southampton's squad and quality within it
01:39 and depth from the bench.
01:40 We talk about Albion's depth from the bench, don't we? In terms of having some players,
01:45 but that's like Premier League, relegated Premier League depth from the bench.
01:48 Well, the lad who scored the second goal cost 20 million pounds.
01:51 Yeah, I mean, all of the players they're bringing on. Yeah, one late on was a big, big money
01:55 buy and just the quality is unbelievable. And within all of that quality, a couple of
02:01 moments at the start of the game, near the end of the game, that told really. And Albion
02:07 were really knocked off their stride for half an hour, weren't they? For the first 30 minutes,
02:11 they weren't at it. Credits to them, managed to get foretold. Final 10 minutes of the first
02:16 half, the best spell of the game played well, created chances. Obviously, we think should
02:20 have had a penalty, I think. And that's tough, isn't it? That's tough. But you can't sort
02:25 of hide behind that. Obviously, you know, Carlos Corbijn dismissed early this evening,
02:29 which we'll get into. But you probably missed him from the touchline, I would say. Second
02:34 half was a non-event, wasn't it? Albion did not get going. They couldn't recreate that
02:37 momentum from the end of the first half in the second. Reasons for that potentially,
02:41 half time change. And it was a bit of a non-event, wasn't it? Until David Brooks killed it off
02:45 with that neat late second goal.
02:48 Yeah, I want to talk briefly on this. Carlos Corbijn sending it off now. This is the second
02:53 game this season where I've seen a manager sent off for that. I saw it at Waterloo in
02:56 the season. I've never seen it before. I think it's happened elsewhere as well. It seems
03:00 like something they're almost clamping down on. But for me, you know, I had a few people
03:04 disagreeing with me on Twitter. The rules are the rules. Yeah, you enter the field to
03:07 play, you get sent off, the ball hasn't gone out of play. Just common sense. We all know
03:14 what Carlos Corbijn's trying to do. He's trying to get Albion playing again quickly.
03:17 He's not come on to foul someone. He hasn't come on to, he hasn't taken out the winger.
03:21 You know, if he tripped up, if he tripped up the winger, but he hasn't. Common sense
03:26 needs to prevail there. I think it did hit Albion a little bit because you see how animated
03:30 Corbijn is on the side of the pit. You know, and I bet that gives Albion an extra two,
03:34 three, 4% and that might be missing tonight.
03:36 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he's spoke kind of sounds like after the game, actually the
03:40 sort of standing skipper at the end of the game. And he's dismissed that. He said, we
03:47 can't put it on Carlos not being there. We were out there on the field, but I think you're
03:50 right. It's such an animated figure when he orchestrates his new, um, vocally we hear
03:56 him. He's always forced after games, isn't he? Now he shouts, but the way he moves is
04:00 knackering to watch, isn't it? And I think that would be missed. I think that would be
04:06 missed. I do. Obviously his coaches were down there with communication in the air and stuff,
04:10 which clearly not the same. Um, yeah. Russell Martin in there, the Southampton manager has
04:16 said it was a rule he didn't know of.
04:18 Connor Townsend said the same. I'd imagine Carlos Corbyn has said the same to me. The
04:24 sympathy I have with Carlos Corbyn is that from the replays we've seen, it looks like
04:28 the ball goes out and potentially might spin back in with a bit of spin on the ball, which,
04:33 which might've been Carlos's argument, but he probably feels, I think you can see in
04:37 the footage, he probably got, got no argument really because the decision wasn't given as
04:42 that it was given a still in play. Wasn't it? And he didn't buy his case or plead. Did
04:46 he just didn't, he just seemed to disappear straight on off and then seven minutes into
04:50 the first game with the new ownership to be sat there behind him.
04:54 It's probably not, not the best for the head coaches and a shame really, because you know,
04:59 he wasn't able to give a true reflection of himself as a coach down there. And I'm sure
05:03 he'd have felt disappointed about that. I'm not actually sure we'd sort of joked. He might
05:07 go and sit in the director's box with Mr. Patel. I'm sure he was sat in there underneath
05:13 the stands with, with a TV. Just want to talk about core brand on, you know, decisions,
05:16 obviously still, you know, as you said on the phone to his assistants and coaches and
05:20 making decisions. And, you know, I think we rarely questioned Carlos Corbyn because of
05:25 the decisions that he makes, the substitutions that he made. There were times last season
05:28 where he was making changes and it was changing games. But I thought today there is a question,
05:32 you know, I'll score a brand and knows more about football, you know, has forgotten more
05:37 about football than I'll ever know. And you'll ever know. We can debate it. We don't know
05:43 if Thomas Zante had a knock. I'm not sure. You know, I thought, you know, although Thomas
05:47 Zante didn't set the world alight in the first half, I thought you take a striker off, you'd
05:51 kind of lose your focal point. He turned the defenders a couple of times. He took John
05:55 Swift off and he took Johnstone off when I thought, you know, they would go at the same
06:00 time. Wallace was a bit ineffective tonight, but certainly the other two were very strange
06:04 decisions. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I didn't get the halftime one. Look, unfortunately,
06:09 we haven't been able to interview Carlos Corbyn after the game as thanks to another stupid
06:14 role. Yeah. Joy. I mean, you know, it's always good to speak to a player and nothing against
06:19 it'd be the same for whether it's Townsend or any player, but you can't ask questions
06:23 about halftime subs to a player. Can you? So it was almost a little bit redundant, which
06:28 is a shame. But I didn't. We don't know if Tom Sante's got a knock. He might have had
06:32 a knock, might any, because otherwise I didn't quite get it. I didn't. I think I don't really
06:38 set the world a lot on Sunday, but he's probably had he's probably had worse against. Yes,
06:42 stayed on after worse. Forty five minutes and worse. Sixty minutes and stuff. So I thought,
06:48 yeah, I'll be in just struggled for a focal point without him. Didn't they really? Jed
06:52 Wallace took the front role, supported by Swift. Didn't work. Did it? I think it go
06:57 in in the second half. Didn't support one of the numbers up there. Weren't the presence,
07:03 like you say, for it to stick and turn and build from that. And the second half was ultimately
07:09 a non event. It was. I'll be didn't come close until that second goal. The question who had
07:14 a two now? Yeah, great save. But yeah, it was the right outcome. I didn't get the Thomas
07:18 Santos up to be honest. And Mikey Johnson is is not too many highlights. It's a positive
07:27 from this evening, I would say. But he's one of them. He is one of them, I would say. I
07:31 think we've seen it in the game so far. Obviously scored the other day. The other night. Sorry,
07:34 we've seen it. I think we've seen him look sharp. But at the hour tonight, he looked
07:39 out and got his back on the pitch. Best part of the pitch. What you know, he looked like
07:42 he belonged there with the Southampton players, I would say. And I was very surprised to see
07:46 him come off. And that's not saying for the players that came on. Obviously, it's nice
07:51 to have Dean Garner back around it. He crossed for you, Cushley's header, but reach is coming
07:55 on young. Colin Marshall's coming on and nothing against those players at all. That's just
08:00 where I'll be in squad is, I guess, isn't it? Even with players coming back. Andy Viamond
08:04 is someone worth mentioning, isn't he? Because again, we haven't been able to clear this
08:09 up, unfortunately, which is frustrating because we haven't been able to interview the head
08:12 coach only speaking to kind of Townsend. But Andy Viamond didn't come on and there are
08:17 suggestions online I saw possibly via the Sky TV footage that Viamond picked up a knock
08:22 in the warmer. Haven't been able to corroborate that yet. But that to me smacks like that
08:27 must be the reason why he didn't come on because you would bring Viamond on, wouldn't you?
08:31 He's been strong for Albion. He's been really good since coming in. End product, energy,
08:35 press. He'd have been ideal to bring on really around that 65 minutes when the changes were
08:40 made and Albion couldn't. So that's a blow. Games coming up in the Plymouth on Tuesday
08:44 night and then obviously all big games. You feel like you're getting a bit of depth in
08:48 competition to change things up and then Viamond, one of the keys, drops unavailable tonight.
08:54 But hopefully with Dean Garnett coming back into it, that's something, isn't it, at least?
08:59 But yeah, Johnson, the big plus point, I would say, on an otherwise disappointing evening,
09:04 but not the evening we all hoped for in terms of Shillam Patel. We just wanted that excitement,
09:15 celebration off the pitch to be replicated in terms of the momentum on the pitch of a
09:18 big game against a huge promotion contender. It didn't quite happen, did it, for a number
09:23 of reasons we've spoken about.
09:24 Yeah, and just finally, very briefly, obviously we talked about it at length last night on
09:28 the emergency podcast, but we saw him here today. Just a lot of excitement. By the end
09:33 of the game, a lot of fans had left, more down to the performance.
09:37 It was a smooth finale, wasn't it?
09:40 But at the start, a very different feel to the Hawthorns and great to see and hopefully
09:45 Sian will take the key.
09:46 Yeah, we said, didn't we, when we just came out here and the players emerged and all of
09:53 that. I mean, I was hopeful of hearing the liquidator, to be honest, but we didn't, alas.
09:57 But it felt like something a bit different in the air, didn't it? It felt to me a bit
10:01 louder. Yes, it was sold out tonight, so the club said, but just felt a bit louder, a bit
10:06 more optimism and positivity in it. All belief, but the start of the game didn't follow the
10:12 trend that it needed to. The first half an hour was almost literally one-way traffic
10:16 and that stunted that kind of excitement in the air, didn't it? But it was definitely
10:20 telling before at the start. I said earlier, coming in here, seeing the stewards, we see
10:25 seeing the familiar faces. We see there's just a bit more sort of, yeah, there's a bit
10:28 more of a smile around the place, wasn't there?
10:30 Yeah, yeah. And a bit of optimism in conversations and things like that. And hopefully that's
10:36 a sign of things to come. But we've had our colleague up here, haven't we, tonight? Matt
10:39 Mayer, chief sports writer. And I know he's written a colour piece on tonight's events.
10:43 And I think I'm right in saying he said something along the lines of, you know, if Shillam Patel
10:47 needs sort of eyes opening in terms of reality check, maybe, maybe. But these are strong,
10:52 aren't they? But if he needs a lesson in top, top level of this division, your Premier League
10:59 quality players, then he's had an immediate one there, I suppose. And that's a good point,
11:03 isn't it? A shame it didn't happen. But look, tough game wasn't meant to be. And a couple
11:09 of things went against that. I've been in Southampton, put them to the sword, I'm afraid.
11:13 They did indeed. Disappointing not on the field, but a change in the guard and hopefully
11:17 the start of a new era. Final score here at the Hawthorns, West Brom, Nails, Southampton
11:22 2, all the rest of you, Action, Express and Star.
11:24 of the book. Navi Roga, please.