Analysis - Season's end can’t come quickly enough for West Brom

By refusing to sack Alan Pardew a few weeks ago, when it may have still made a difference, the board publicly accepted relegation.

After that admission, supporters have understandably started to turn away from their team, and the swathes of empty blue seats at The Hawthorns on Saturday were worrying.

Far more unacceptable though, was what we saw on the pitch.

Albion have been dreadful during plenty of games this season, most in fact, but they’ve never looked quite as lacklustre and limp as they did in this first half.

Pardew’s questionable decision to stick with a five-man defence that needed changing at half-time played its part, but there were also certain individuals simply going through the motions.

Afterwards, Albion’s unsuccessful head coach put the misplaced plasses, the testimonial pace and the lack of energy down to pressure.

But that doesn’t ring true, because there is less pressure on this side than at any other point this season.

The fans have given up; the atmosphere inside the ground is hardly toxic, it is one of black humour.

By refusing to sack Pardew, the board have publicly given up, and even Pardew – that bastion of positivity – has started to repeat himself after games, obviously at a loss of what to do.

No, it wasn’t pressure that brought about that eerily distasteful first half performance, it was apathy.

This team is going through the motions now, counting down the days until this nightmare season is over and they are allowed to leave or start afresh.

They are ready to welcome the warm embrace of execution.

There was a second-half rally after a shift in formation, which Pardew hopes will go some way to keeping the relationship between fan and team on the right side of comfortable for at least another week, until the next defeat.

But even though Salomon Rondon scored a late consolation goal, and the team made a fist of it for the start of the second half, the response to that rally was, by and large, a collective shoulder shrug.

Rondon’s goal was barely celebrated. There were so few fans left in the stadium and those who stayed knew it wasn’t going to spark a comeback. They’ve seen this show before.

They had already accepted they were going to lose. They were proved right.

Most pragmatic fans understand the team is going down, and understand why Pardew remains in charge for the time being ahead of a summer rebuild.

But that doesn’t make it any more palatable. The Hawthorns is quickly turning into a ghost town.

Forget dwindling attendances under Tony Pulis, crowds are falling off a cliff now. The official gate may have been 23,455, but it looked closer to 18,000.

By the end of the season, that will probably fall even lower.

Whether this losing streak – which at nine games is the club’s longest in more than 22 years – does any lasting damage on the size of the fanbase remains to be seen.

The buzz can return quickly when matches are being won.

But there might be those who, after years of pumping money into the club, turn away for good now, not just because they’re sick of this season or sick of this team or sick of this manager, but because they’re sick of modern football and these defeats are the final straw.

Pardew’s deficiencies were laid clear once more. At least under Pulis there was a plan.

It's worrying when any manager admits he was left ‘scratching his head’, it's even more worrying when it comes because he's unsure why a team he picked with five defenders and two holding midfielders in it is struggling to create anything of note.

Players looked unsure of their jobs in the first half, unsure of their positions, unsure of their roles.

At one point Allan Nyom was playing right wing, while Oliver Burke, Matt Phillips and James McClean all sat twiddling their thumbs on the bench.

Pardew's refusal to play Grzegorz Krychowiak after their touchline bust-up has limited his options further, but the Pole isn’t the only player who has lost his respect for the head coach.

Gareth Barry’s decision to visit Snobs nightclub on the eve of a match was stupid, so soon after the Barcelona incident.

Even if he was injured, and was therefore under no curfew, it sends the wrong message to supporters still hurting from his actions in Spain and suggests he cares little about Pardew or the club.

That is just a minor sidenote to this poisonous season though, which has now nearly reached its conclusion.

Everyone, from paying fan to playing staff, is now looking forward to the campaign (if it even deserves to be called that) being put out of its misery.

The dreaded R which, for so long would be recoiled from in horror, is now actively welcomed as a starting point of the purge.

Six more to go before it’s all over.