West Brom boss Tony Pulis is enjoying a fantastic season and could etch his name in the club’s history.
West Bromwich Albion enjoyed a surprise 3-1 win over Arsenal in Saturday’s Premier League clash to end their run of consecutive defeats and see them go level with Arsenal for home wins in the league this season (9).
Tony Pulis’ men have already matched last season’s points tally (43) with nine games still to go and the Baggies look set to break their current record (49 points in 2012/13) as things stand, to cap a fantastic campaign.
Albion not settling for mere consolidation
Many felt West Bromwich Albion would take their foot off the gas after reaching 40 points in the Premier League this season following defeats to Crystal Palace and Everton, but the opposite has been true. After the Midlands outfit suffered their second defeat in as many games manager Tony Pulis held a team meeting to ensure the players didn’t let up until the end of the campaign.
The Baggies have been eighth in the Premier League since December 2016, and their large advantage over ninth coupled with a sizeable deficit to seventh means Albion are likely to remain in the same position for the rest of the campaign. They players could perhaps be forgiven for a lack of motivation as a result, but it’s clear they want to set a new points record.
Two wins away from matching 2012/13 record
It will take just two more league wins from West Brom to match the points record of four years ago and they have nine games in which to do it – 24% of the season remaining. Albion have averaged 1.48 points-per-game in 2016/17 and are set to finish the campaign with 56 points as things stand. It’s unlikely they will better 2012/13’s eighth-place finish but it’s nevertheless a fantastic achievement if they can deliver as expected.
The pressure to improve on the last campaign led to recent criticism for a mini-dip in form but Pulis wants the narrative to be on how well the players have done to be in a position to break the record this season. “I understand, you raise the bar and if you don’t reach that again you and the players are going to get criticism. For me, they’ve just been fantastic this year, irrespective of what happens now. We could lose the next three games, we’ve still had a fantastic season.”
West Bromwich Albion are 1/20 to finish in the top-10 of the Premier League this season. Can the Baggies break the 49 points record? How many will they finish with?
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