Beside The Seaside
Blackpool v The Baggies preview
It’s only a friendly, of course, but there’s added spice in this fixture with Albion crossing swords with Steve Bruce for the first time since his departure in October 2022 from The Hawthorns.
Bruce seems like a decent bloke but his partnership with Chief Executive Ron Gourlay intensified the malaise at our club, leaving us hovering just above the bottom of the Championship on the day he was sacked.
Key signings John Swift and Jed Wallace had failed to deliver; and he bizarrely kept faith with the hapless David Button in goal.
It’s worth reflecting that in the two and a half years since Bruce’s final game - a goalless draw with Luton - ten of the starting line-up have departed, with only Wallace remaining.
It’s a marker of the speed with which fortunes can fluctuate in football that just six months after he left, Albion pulled off a late-season 2-0 win at Blackpool in pursuit of a play-off place, having been completely transformed by Carlos Corberan.
This was our last visit to Bloomfield Road and possibly the only game in which all The Baggies goals were scored by players with double barrelled names - BTA and TGH.
That result virtually condemned The Seasiders to relegation, although after finishing 9th in League One last season, they’ll be hopeful of making a decent fist of a promotion challenge this time around.
The game will give fans their first chance to see new centra-back Nat Phillips in a Baggies shirt and possibly striker Aune Heggebo, although it will presumably be too soon for our third summer recruit, George Campbell.