Throughout recent years, West Bromwich Albion have had their ups and downs with different managers at the helm.
With several men holding the position at The Hawthorns, Albion supporters have experienced a range of emotions, from joyously celebrating their team’s fourth promotion to the Premier League to experiencing hardships at the bottom of both the top flight and second-tier divisions.
The Black Country team only managed to add three new players to the squad this summer, making it much harder to accomplish the goal of getting promoted to the Premier League at the third attempt. However, with stability on the field maintained toward the end of the previous season, the Baggies will look to do so at the third attempt.
Alan Pardew, who took over for Tony Pulis at The Hawthorns in November 2017 after Albion had lost their previous ten games in the top tier and was 16th at the time, is ranked as the worst manager of all time.
It’s easy to conclude that the 62-year-old’s brief tenure was a complete failure, since Pardew oversaw a stolen cab incident involving several of the playing team during a trip to Barcelona for team building.
After that disaster, Pardew was unable to turn things around and was fired in April 2018 after eight straight losses left the team 10 points from safety with six games left. The Baggies were ultimately relegated despite interim manager Darren Moore’s best efforts.
Steve Bruce is the next person up, who in February 2022 tried to
rebuild an Albion team that had lost all of its faith.
When the former Newcastle United manager took over, the Baggies were in sixth position. He was unable to reverse this downward trend, and the West Midlands team finished in tenth place.
In Bruce’s first full season at the Baggies the following season, the team signed Jed Wallace, John Swift, and Okay Yokuslu in the summer. However, things went from bad to worse under the 62-year-old, with the team finishing in the bottom three after just one league win from 13 Championship games before he was fired.
The next person to take over is Bruce’s predecessor, Valerien Ismael, whose job it was to get The Hawthorns back into the Premier League after their 2021 relegation.
Ismael had just had an incredibly successful season at Barnsley, leading the Tykes to a play-off berth before they were defeated over two legs by Swansea City in the semi-finals.
Known for playing fast-paced, high-octane football, WBA struggled under the French coach as the players were unable to sustain the high effort they had shown early in the campaign.
Following two straight losses to Preston and Millwall, fans became irate with Ismael’s uncompromising strategies and unappealing playing style, leading WBA to release the 48-year-old. Ismael has only won 12 of his 31 games.
Next is Darren Moore, a legend of the Albion club who was appointed to his first permanent management position at The Hawthorns following a fruitful interim spell in the Premier League.
Moore had a wealth of quality at his disposal, but WBA supporters frequently criticized him for allowing assistant Graeme Jones to dictate too much about the style of play. Albion was often the architect of their own demise, giving goals away when playing out from the back.
The Baggies, led by Jay Rodriguez, Dwight Gayle, and Harvey Barnes, had a strong drive towards the automatic pn was unable to continue its winning streak after the latter was called up by Leicester City in January of that year. As a result, Moore was fired in March 2019, with the Black Country team sitting fourth in the second division after two losses in their previous three league games, including a 4-0 thrashing at Leeds United.
The Albion supporters call him “Big Dave,” and the experience has helped him in his future management career. Moore, who will turn thirty in May 2023, will coach Sheffield Wednesday to a remarkable promotion to the Championship.
