Mason looks for solutions to Albion’s forward frailties

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·30 ottobre 2025

Mason looks for solutions to Albion’s forward frailties

West Bromwich Albion v Sheffield Wednesday; The Hawthorns, Saturday 1st November 2025, 12.30pm

After returning to action following the international break with a morale-boosting victory over Preston North End, Ryan Mason’s team has since slumped to successive away defeats with, the first 30 minutes at Watford aside, little to excite the travelling fans. The gut-wrenching defeat at Portman Road was particularly difficult to take given how poor the hosts were and the nature of the winning goal.

Unsurprisingly, there has been a stream of knee-jerk reactions from the twitterati calling for heads, blaming Mason and/or the new owners, but there has, thankfully, been a good deal of more measured commentary from those who understand the process the club is going through, and that Albion, as much as we would like to believe it, has no God-given right to be in the top six, let alone the top flight.

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Of course, it is difficult to ignore the paucity of chances created in recent weeks, particularly at Ipswich when the Baggies managed just one attempt on target and registered a paltry xG of just 0.39. There is no doubt that Albion’s attacking play needs to improve, but how Mason can engineer that is not necessarily straightforward.

The three main areas the coaching staff can make changes are personnel, formation and the pattern or style of play. For personnel, there is no doubt that the choices have been limited by injuries and it is becoming increasingly frustrating to see Josh Maja continuingly denied regular starts, presumably because his body is not yet up to it – having been left out at Watford, I assumed he would start at Ipswich, but no such luck. Grant is also still being eased back in, as is Daryl Dike, while we are still yet to see Tamer Bany in a first team squad this season, although he did play another 45 minutes in the PL2 win over Reading last Friday. Meanwhile, while few of us expect Jed Wallace to win us a game these days, he is another player that remains sidelined barring any news to the contrary.

Heggebø continues to toil away but he is feeding on scraps and it seems clear that he is unlikely to create too much on his own, meaning the onus falls to Iling-Junior, Johnston and Price to create everything and, while they have done a fair bit of that, Johnston and Price in particular, they are unsurprisingly not able to do it every week on their own with very little rest or support.

Molumby’s absence is noticed in the middle of the park – his energy and enthusiasm inspires those around him – while Collyer’s injury means that Mowatt and Diakité are going to start unless there is a change in formation. I guess Bielik could be an option in midfield, but he has not always been available.

There are a few promising youngsters, of course, with Cole Deeming and Ollie Bostock having been included in matchday squads recently, and Bostock looking lively off the bench at Millwall, but it’s difficult to see Mason using them too extensively while there are senior options available, if only for short spells.

So, with limitations on the availability of players, should Mason be looking to change formation. The 4-2-3-1 setup that seems to be being used is probably the most common in modern football, and one that has been primarily used by a succession of Albion head coaches over the past few years. I am personally not overly concerned about formations as they can be very fluid during the game, and it is more about the tactical instructions given to the players in each possession. For example, if you watch Mason’s Albion, the front four are often switching around and Heggebø is not always the furthest player forward while the wide players will come inside and the number ten will move wider.

Having said that, the defensive formation is generally more fixed and Albion definitely employ a back four, even if it is with three natural centre backs. While Styles could play as a wing back on the left, it’s difficult to identify an alternative on the right side to facilitate a back three. Gilchrist remains an unknown quantity at Albion, but he only played in a back four last season for the Blades and I’m not sure that any of Albion’s wide right-sided midfielders have defensive discipline for a wing back role. Iling-Junior is a potential option, albeit his experience in defensive positions in the past has generally been on the left side.

Perhaps the most obvious formation change that some have called for is to push one of the sitting midfielders into a more advanced position, and maybe even play a second striker. Without two fully fit strikers, the latter option is not really available to Mason at the moment and, with only three senior strikers, the squad is certainly not built to play with two up top. As for the sitting midfielders, Molumby, when he plays, often gets forward, but in recent games, when Mowatt and Diakité have partnered, neither have really looked to push on and I’m not sure either is that capable of doing so. Mowatt can be deployed as a number ten, but if you are going to play through midfield, you do need a ball player like him to receive the ball from the defence.

And that brings us nicely onto the real question mark, the style of play. For me, it is the crux of the current issues and the most difficult to solve. Mason’s approach is not all that different from Corberán’s, a patient passing style most successfully employed in England by Pep Guardiola. It can obviously work as Pep demonstrated, and it may well work at Albion given time, but it is not really working at the moment. I’m not a football coach and I’m sure Mason and his coaching team have analysed this much better than I ever could but, in my opinion, for it to be successful, you need players who can not only see the forward passes that will thread though a packed midfield, but be able to execute them and, more importantly, have the confidence to execute them in that split second when the decision to pass forward, or not, is made. When confidence is low, you get the constant sideways passing we have seen in the past two matches, without the penetrative forward passes needed to break open a well organised opposition. When the passes stop coming, the players who would receive them stop making the moves and everything becomes very stale.

So, how to change it? Can the style be changed? Does the squad have the players to play a more direct or counter-attacking style?

Unless Dike is fit to play up front, a direct approach is much more difficult – Heggebø’s hold up play has been generally good, but he can easily be dominated by a tall centre back unless the ball is exactly right. Furthermore, a direct approach needs runners in behind, close to the central striker – Johnston can do that, but I’m not sure it’s really Price’s strength.

A counter-attacking style can be very effective but it is dangerous, as it relies on an extremely well-drilled defence and surrenders possession to the opposition. It also needs several players with genuine pace to exploit the opportunities when they arise. The Albion squad has precious few of those and, while they have scored goals on the break this season, Price’s against Preston being the most recent, I don’t think they have the players for it to be a primary approach.

Of course, any change of style takes time to implement and, with Mason having been working on his preferred approach since July, I don’t think we will see any huge evolution in the short term, but perhaps we will see tweaks. Andrew Nestor’s promise of front-foot football hasn’t come to fruition as yet, but it is still early days of Mason’s tenure and neither is the squad rebuild complete. Patience is a virtue, and I think us Baggies fans will need to be virtuous for a good while longer!

Having said that, the next half-dozen games represent a great opportunity to pick up points. The vagaries of the fixture list mean that Albion have played seven of their twelve games on the road, meaning that four of the next six are at the Hawthorns, all of which are against teams currently in the bottom half of the table. Trips to sixth-placed Charlton Athletic and leaders Coventry City are interspersed in that run and will be tough, but if the Baggies can find away to win all of those home games, the picture will be a little brighter.

That starts this weekend against Sheffield Wednesday who have picked up just one point on the road this season. They have been boosted by the departure of their much-maligned owner, but they remain a team of largely inexperienced, if enthusiastic, players with one or two exceptions, and anything other than a victory for Albion will be seen as a bad result.

History

Sheffield Wednesday’s record at the Hawthorns is just as impressive as Albion’s record at Vicarage Road – no win since 2007. Of course, streaks are there to be ended, but given the Owls’ current form and predicament, it would be nice to think that it won’t be this weekend.

Albion’s 1-0 home defeat in April 2007 thanks to Deon Burton’s second half goal was somewhat bad-tempered with both Neil Clement and Darren Carter receiving their marching orders in stoppage time, and it pretty much put an end to any faint hopes that Baggies fans may have had for automatic promotion as it left them eight points shy of second-placed Derby County with three games left. It would be County, of course, who would ultimately deny Albion promotion in the play-off final at Wembley.

In terms of the Baggies’ record against Sheffield Wednesday, it did mark the end of a poor run of results. Albion beat the Owls only once in 14 games between 1975 and 2007, a 2-1 win at Hillsborough in 2000, which comprised a run of seven meetings at the Hawthorns without a home win – in the six since, Albion have won four and drawn two.

The latest meeting was decided very late, of course, with Molumby’s stoppage time winner in February coming after Wednesday’s own stoppage time equaliser. Like the match in 2007, there was also a late red card when Kyle Bartley was dismissed in the 99th minute as the celebrations for the winner turned nasty.