Why West Brom’s relegation is a long-term failing that necessitated unsustainable short-term thinking

The Baggies won't find it as easy as usual to bounce back this time either

The greatest wonder of West Bromwich Albion’s season from hell is not the scale of the nightmare to befall them but the fact it took so long to happen.

When Albion’s new hierarchy embark on their summer ‘reboot’ in the wake of a shambolic relegation, the primary objective will restoring the winning structure that began to crumble six years ago.

The seeds of the crisis that finally overwhelmed the Baggies this season can be traced back to the summer of 2012, when the FA came calling for Dan Ashworth and the cornerstone of their previous successes was removed.

Finally, after extraordinarily surviving six more turbulent seasons littered with poor decisions but gilded with some fine results, they have finally, inevitably, toppled into the Championship

West Brom's run of good form has come too late (Getty)

The loss of Ashworth, whose departure to FA employment came just a few months after Roy Hodgson made the same move, left Albion with a vacuum to fill.

It is a challenge they have yet to fully rise to; a long-term failing that necessitated short-term thinking which eventually brought an embarrassing conclusion.

The recruitment of Tony Pulis as head coach in January 2015 was, for some supporters, the error that led to the end of the club’s Premier League adventure, given his hard-nosed pragmatism that jarred with Albion’s traditional style and supporters’ historic enmity towards the Welshman from his time in charge of Stoke City.

The reality, however, is that the appointment of football’s arch-firefighter - undoubtedly an ill fit for the club - became a near-necessity amid the inferno of chaos that had engulfed them.

Tony Pulis was never truly accepted by supporters (Getty)

For all the faults and limitations that made Pulis a lightning rod for supporter unrest at the start of this season, he worked a minor miracle to extend West Brom’s top-flight existence for a further two seasons from the crisis he inherited.

That crisis began when Jeremy Peace, the then chairman, made the cautious selection of Richard Garlick to replace Ashworth as sporting and technical director.

A man whose legal and administrative skills are so respected he will leave West Brom this summer having been headhunted by the Premier League, Garlick nevertheless lacked the experience at the coalface of playing and coaching to make a success of his role.

As he tried to adapt, the increasing influence of Dave McDonough, a behind-the-scenes analyst who gained the ear of Peace and began to influence key decisions, caused ill feeling among playing and coaching staff.

His rise to prominence led indirectly to the departure of Steve Clarke, the head coach who had made a decent fist of replacing Hodgson before becoming mired in transfer politics and a slump in results.

McDonough’s eventual exit came during a season that included the sacking of Clarke, the McDonough-inspired appointment of Pepe Mel, a revolt from senior players against the hapless Spaniard’s authority and the saga of Nicolas Anelka’s ‘quenelle’ gesture at Upton Park.

It was a season every bit as chaotic as this one but, thanks to the quiet efforts of coaches Keith Downing and Dean Kiely, without the grim outcome. Somehow West Brom survived by three points.

The opportunity was there to regroup, yet more baffling decisions were to follow with the shock appointment of the untested Alan Irvine as Mel’s successor and the arrival of Terry Burton as technical director to take over half of Garlick’s brief.

Pulis was hated by the fans for his style of football (Getty)

Neither man survived for long - Irvine sacked in December 2014 and Burton effectively sidelined by Pulis’ arrival - yet, on their watch, a squad emerged packed with players lacking the ability and experience for the Premier League.

Sebastian Blanco, Georgios Samaras, Cristian Gamboa, Jason Davidson, Brown Ideye and Sebastien Pocognoli all arrived, and all flopped.

Still, thanks to Pulis’ powers of organisation, they dodged the relegation bullet not once but twice.

The need to send for Pulis did, however, necessitate the dismantling of the footballing infrastructure that Peace had spent almost a decade constructing.

Georgios Samaras arrived and flopped (Getty)

The price of a survival, which was essential to Peace’s hopes of selling the club, was a manager who was given virtual autonomy.

Nick Hammond had moved from Reading to replace Burton, yet such was Pulis’s force of personality that, when his influence petered out and he was sacked last November, West Brom had little or no football framework on which to fall back.

By now, Peace had offloaded his controlling stake to Guochuan Lai, a Chinese businessman.

His picks as chairman and CEO, John Williams and Martin Goodman, sanctioned significant spending last summer on Pulis’ targets, yet ended the transfer window with an imbalanced squad that floundered badly.

Jeremy Peace failed to replace Dan Ashworth and the slump started from there (Getty)

When Pulis was gone, a lack of funds, lack of infrastructure and utter lack of impact from Alan Pardew, his oddly passive replacement, left Albion facing inevitable relegation and an unwanted bank overdraft following eight years in the Premier League. The late-night, taxi-driving escapades of four senior players on Pardew’s ill-fated training trip to Barcelona came to epitomise a club shorn of its identity and out of control.

Mark Jenkins, Peace’s trusted right-hand man, has returned for a second spell as CEO with a mission to rebuild from the rubble of a chaotic season.

The man who previously played a key role in ‘bounce-back’ promotions will be adept at getting Albion’s finances fit for the task, but he will find a very different landscape to that which greeted their last relegation in 2009. The Championship is stronger while West Brom’s squad is less suited to the rigours of the second tier, with many of its better players expected to leave thanks to buy-out clauses.

A major overhaul is needed and, with Hammond gone and Garlick serving his notice, the experienced Italian Giuliano Terraneo has arrived as a technical consultant to advise Jenkins and Lai.

West Brom need to hit the restart button (Getty)

The headline task of his short-term tenure is to find a new head coach.

His more vital function, however, is finding solutions to problems that have gone unsolved for six years and have led, slowly, surely but inexorably, to relegation.