With the Boro losing away at Bristol City at the weekend this game felt like a ‘must-win’ if the momentum that we’ve built up since Chris Wilder’s appointment wasn’t going to stall. There were more empty seats than normal, but the combination of a mid-week fixture, poor weather and it being on the telly made that understandable.
The ref, as is so often the case in the Championship, was poor. Not just in that his decisions rarely went our way but more in his determination to keep play flowing by rarely blowing for a foul. The consequences were that the tackles got stronger, and more time was wasted by players surrounding him with a list of retrospective complaints every time the ball eventually went dead. He’d have found the players a lot easier to manage if he’d blown for a few early free-kicks and set the tone.
Boro never really got going in the first-half and West Brom were well worth their one goal lead at the break. I thought that we missed the suspended Matt Crooks, particularly the way that he links up with Isiah Jones.
The game turned around in the second half with the substitutions. Watmore raised the intensity level and Tav moving to left wing-back allowed us an extra forward on the pitch. The resulting two-one win was our seventh successive home victory and took us back on track for the play-offs.
Tags: Boro, Championship, West Brom
Trail of the Lion King 
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