It will go down as a season of two parts — the second even more wretched than the first. Whatever their contrasting shortcomings, you would always have backed Tony Pulis to bring a kind of resilience and Alan Pardew to galvanise a team in the short term. Perhaps that is the ultimate indictment of West Bromwich Albion’s class of 2017-18, a group of players who have been beyond the powers of those two managers, who usually do what it says on the tin. Relegation is not yet official but West Brom have looked resigned to their fate for some time. Pardew said last week, after seven consecutive Premier League losses, that staying up would be “difficult, if not impossible”.

Source: The Times April 02, 2018 17:09 UTC