Darren Moore is never going to blow his own trumpet but, after the alienation, strain and pain of relegation last season, the Hawthorns seems a happier haunt these days. “I hope so,” Moore, the affable West Bromwich Albion head coach, says, sitting in a pocket of the stadium overlooking the pristine pitch. “It certainly feels a different place.”
Results help. After almost hatching the greatest of great escapes, the Baggies are back in the Championship, for the first time since 2010. After impressing in caretaker charge – Moore memorably won the manager of the month award after an unbeaten April – he landed the job on a permanent basis by mid-May. No longer the popular supply teacher, these days Moore is head teacher. He has galvanised the group, making the job his own. In some ways, Albion have picked up where they left off. Before Tuesday night’s wins for Leeds and Middlesbrough, they were top of the pile. Victory at Sheffield Wednesday on Wednesday night will return them to the summit.
West Brom have made the post-Premier League rebuilding job that Stoke City and others in previous seasons – notably west Midlands rivals Aston Villa – have found tricky to navigate look relatively simple. It is, of course, early days and in-house nobody is getting carried away, but there are reasons to be cheerful about a team that has been lovingly glued together; they are scoring goals for fun – they have 25 league goals, more than any other team in the division – and have not lost on home soil since the opening day of the season, when Moore described a late defeat to Bolton Wanderers as a “wake-up call”. The reaction has proved exemplary, with eight wins from their past 12 matches.
As for the squad at his disposal, they boast an almost embarrassment of riches, while six of the team that started the final day of last season featured in Saturday’s win over Preston North End: Kieran Gibbs, Craig Dawson, Ahmed Hegazi, Jake Livermore, Chris Brunt and Jay Rodriguez. The latter has been in irresistible form, striking up a classy partnership with Dwight Gayle, who joined on loan in a swap deal with Salomón Rondón. Add Matt Phillips or Hal Robson-Kanu, Bakary Sako, the free agent and former Wolves winger signed this week, or Harvey Barnes, plus the almighty potential of Oliver Burke, a £15m arrival last summer, into the mix and it is clear that Albion have the tools to not only hurt teams but blow them away. Few double acts would trump Gayle and Rodriguez, who have 13 goals between them.
“Whether they’re the best strike-force [in the division], we’ll see come the end of the season,” the 44-year-old says. “At the moment, they are getting on really well together off the pitch and on it. They both have a wonderful eye for goal, wonderful technical ability, and a calmness when the chances do come, but they’d be the first to say their team-mates should get the credit.” Rodriguez, who played with Moore while on loan at Barnsley in 2010, has been equally complimentary. “The guy he is now is the guy everyone knows – the lads have taken to him well,” the striker said. “He’s honest but he wants what everyone wants, which is to become better. Everyone respects him as a manager and a person. That respect is massive in anything in life.”
In midfield, the nous of Gareth Barry, who turns 38 in February, is invaluable but, at the back, their three-man defence of Dawson, Hegazi and Kyle Bartley have not been so convincing, though possess ample clout to make life difficult. Hegazi, in particular, has stabilised things in recent weeks. As Moore says, his team remains a work in progress, stressing the Championship will toss up plenty of ups and downs over the next 36 games. “This league is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. Like I keep saying every week we keep learning, we keep implementing, and we just try to keep that togetherness going in terms of the fact we’re in a very tough division and we’re competing against 23 other teams.”
Away from players, there have been key personnel changes; Luke Dowling was appointed technical director last week, following Giuliano Terraneo’s short-lived spell as a technical consultant after Nick Hammond’s sacking in April. Dowling is well known to Moore, having worked with him at Blackburn; they will work with chief executive, Mark Jenkins. “I’m really pleased to be working with him again,” Moore says. “He’s very astute in the business world of football and very, very knowledgeable in the game.”
Nobody is better placed than Moore, the former Baggies defender, to sense the restored feelgood factor, the whiff of optimism. “You just want people – not just supporters but everybody in all areas of the football club – wanting to come and enjoy what they do, because what they do is very, very important, to see the club move in the right direction.
“That’s the responsibility we have as a football club to the local community. When a club’s results are good, it can send ripples of positive energy through to the local community. That can only be a good thing and that’s credit to everybody here. Long may it continue, but we have got some work to do.”
Talking points
• The tip of the iceberg? Tempers boiling over? The atmosphere at Villa Park turned toxic during the 3-3 draw with Preston, with a fan throwing a vegetable at under-fire manager Steve Bruce, who seemed to question his future in post-match interviews. “If I think it affects the team and the morale of the team, then of course, overnight … I’ll reflect on it, get on with it and roll my sleeves up unless I really think it affects the individuals.”
• How much longer does Ipswich chairman Marcus Evans give Paul Hurst to get things right? It is October and Hurst is yet to taste victory as manager. Between the merry-go-round of John Askey, who replaced Hurst at Shrewsbury, and Mark Yates, who took over from Askey at Macclesfield, the three have registered a single league victory between them.
• Keith Curle picked up a point in his first game in charge of Northampton, against Bury, but that elusive home win continues to elude the lowly Cobblers. “There was an air of nervousness about the team at the start which is understandable,” said Curle, the team’s fifth manager since Chris Wilder led them to the League Two title in 2016.
• For Oldham the sooner Sam Surridge returns from a hip injury, the better. The 20-year-old, on loan from Bournemouth, has seven goals in seven appearances – a strike-rate of 78 minutes per goal – but has missed the past two matches, which both ended goal-less.
• Kudos to Accrington Stanley, who are fifth in League One, level with Sunderland on 20 points after a third straight league win. “The lads laugh at me, because they don’t understand the phrase, but we were like Tasmanian devils in the second half,” said manager John Coleman, after a 1-0 victory over Doncaster.
