Baggies must take advantage of home comforts

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·4 April 2025

Baggies must take advantage of home comforts

West Bromwich Albion v Sunderland; The Hawthorns, Saturday 5th April 2025, 12.30pm

Tony Mowbray’s team welcome Sunderland to the Hawthorns on Saturday lunchtime as they look to get back to winning ways following their defeat at Norwich last weekend. With seven games to go, the inconsistency of all the teams chasing the final two play-off places means that it’s not clear how many points the Baggies will need to secure a top six finish, but Albion’s away record suggests that they will need to get the bulk of them at the Hawthorns.

It is their final match against one of the top four, with the seven previous games all ending in draws. Sunderland are in a strange position having dropped away from the top three but remained well clear of fifth spot. It seems highly unlikely that they will finish anywhere other than fourth, but Régis Le Bris will want to keep his team’s form good to take into the play-offs.

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The Black Cats have been in reasonable form of late winning three of their last five games, albeit they lost 3-0 at Coventry City and were surprisingly beaten 1-0 at home to Hull City in February. They beat Millwall 1-0 last weekend despite Luke O’Nien having a penalty saved – it was the fourth successive penalty that the Black Cats have missed this season with Wilson Isidor having missed two in a goalless draw with Burnley in January and Patrick Roberts failing to convert in a defeat to Sheffield United in November. Roberts is the only Sunderland player to have scored a penalty this season, ironically in defeat, at Plymouth in September.

Despite his penalty misses, Frenchman Isidor is the Wearsiders’ top scorer with 12 goals this season having joined from Zenit St Petersburg, initially on loan, at the beginning of the season. He is certainly the most dangerous of Sunderland’s front players with 14 goal involvements in the Championship this season, with his Spanish teammate, Eliezer Mayenda, not too far behind with 12, seven goals and five assists. Leeds United and Norwich City are the only teams to have scored more goals than the Black Cats’ 56 this season.

Albion’s defeat at Carrow Road last weekend was a similar story of the Baggies dominating the game without carrying the goal threat to match. Mowbray, once again, went with Armstrong through the middle and didn’t make any changes until there were only 12 minutes left – yes, Albion looked to be in control but they hadn’t looked like scoring since early in the first half when efforts from Grant and Fellows were kept out by Gunn.

In my opinion, the Baggies have become too easy to defend against and need a few different ways of playing to keep the opposition defences guessing. The most obvious option would be to play Dike or Lankshear through the middle to offer a more physical presence as Armstrong does not seem to be troubling opposition defences frequently enough. It’s nothing different to what I was saying in my preview last week, but we’ve yet to see any real change in approach.

One positive for this weekend is that there is no need to protect the players who had been away on international duty, so Price, Diangana and Johnston will all be available to start should they be selected, while Darnell Furlong will also be back from suspension which should allow Mowbray to return to a back four. I’d like to think that Furlong wouldn’t have allowed Sargent such a free run on goal as he had for the winning goal at Norwich, and his return will certainly improve the team as a whole.

As one of the best sides in the division, Sunderland will be a very tough opponent, but Albion have tended to raise their game against the better sides this season for the most part. They haven’t, however, beaten the Black Cats since Daryl Dike’s first return from injury at the Stadium of Light in December 2022, and haven’t bettered them at the Hawthorns since January 2017. A draw would complete the set against the top four, but it could also see Albion drop to as low as eighth by Saturday evening, ahead of a crucial trip to Bristol City on Tuesday.

Albion failed to step up last weekend and, such is the form of the chasing sides, another defeat this weekend won’t be terminal, but Mowbray’s team need to continue to pick up wins, and they seem best able to do that at the Hawthorns.

History

Albion have played only three clubs (Aston Villa, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Everton) more often than Sunderland in competitive football with Saturday being the 162nd encounter with the Wearsiders. The first meeting was a Stoney Lane in September 1890 with the visitors winning 4-0. The second match between the sides was a 1-1 draw at Sunderland’s Newcastle Road ground but Albion lost the other four of the first five games conceding 21 goals in the process! In fact, the Baggies could only manage two draws in the first dozen meetings with Sunderland before eventually beating them 1-0 at Stoney Lane in November 1896 thanks to a goal from John Cameron.

Given that Sunderland lead the head-to-head record 12-4 by the end of the 19th century, it’s fair to say that the Baggies have the edge since then as they are only four behind in the overall picture! By the time Albion moved into the Hawthorns in 1900, Sunderland were in their long term home, Roker Park. The Baggies won their first ever game with the Rokerites at the Hawthorns, again 1-0, this time with a goal from Jim Stevenson in November 1900.

Albion’s biggest win over Sunderland came in the free-scoring 1930s. On Boxing Day 1932, Ginger Richardson was in his pomp and scored a hat-trick in a 5-1 victory over the Wearsiders with Walter Robbins and Joe Carter scoring the other goals. In a remarkable decade, each side scored six goals in this fixture twice – Sunderland won 6-1 at Roker Park in 1935 and 6-1 at the Hawthorns in 1937 while Albion won 6-5 at the Hawthorns in 1934 and 6-4 in 1937 with “WG” scoring in both games.

In recent years, Albion’s biggest home wins were 4-0 in February 2012 when Peter Odemwingie (2), James Morrison and Keith Andrews were the scorers, and 3-0 in September 2013 with goals from Stéphane Sessègnon, Liam Ridgewell and Morgan Amalfitano. Neither side has scored more than two goals in any match against the other since then.