Matt Maher: Mistakes of the past still cast a shadow at West Brom
It was late March when a group of journalists were invited into Albion’s training ground and briefed on the club’s soon-to-be released accounts.
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Such sessions are standard practice for many clubs, a useful way of grasping hold of the narrative before the numbers become public.
On this occasion, the figures for Albion’s 2022-23 financial year looked relatively OK, with a loss of £11million hardly catastrophic. Yet the clear message from those at The Hawthorns was that trouble lay ahead.
Financial results are only released when the next financial year is almost up and the figures for the 2023-24 season, we were told, would look nowhere near so pretty. Though Albion’s future might have been secured by Shilen Patel and the Bilkul group’s takeover a few weeks before, the chaos of the final years under Guochuan Lai had left the Baggies perilously close breaching profit and sustainability rules. Avoiding a sanction would have to be the No.1 priority of the new regime’s first summer window.
This is the message Carlos Corberan was trying to relay this week. No matter how many times reporters might write it, nothing gets the attention like a head coach saying it.
There was a definite sense Corberan felt the need to spell out the financial reality as part of a defence against recent results which have represented the first real wobble of his reign. In that respect, it was fair enough.
There is no doubt Corberan has made mistakes over the past couple of months, just as every other head coach will do. But as he was entitled to point out, it has not been the easiest gig. The job he did for his first 18 months at The Hawthorns, against a backdrop of continued off-field turmoil, ranks among the most important in Albion’s history.
It is why there really are admiring glances in his direction from clubs at the bottom end of the Premier League. You sense Southampton’s decision to move for Ivan Juric will prove a good one for Albion in the end.
The Baggies are undoubtedly ending 2024 in a better place than they began it, when their very future was at risk. But as Corberan was entitled to point out, those mistakes of the past still cast a long shadow.
