Senior players taking a grip? A new manager banging heads together? A key creator finding form? Or a weekend out in Manchester? Perhaps it really is all about “creating magic”.
West Bromwich Albion find themselves in the inevitable role of the pre-season promotion favourites whose season is in danger of unravelling.
Anzeige
But all is not lost. The history of the Championship is littered with examples of sides in similar spots who have turned their campaigns around and secured a route into the Premier League.
Here are six tales of teams who steadied their figurative ships and sailed themselves to glory when they’d appeared bound for the rocks.
A couple have even involved new Albion manager Steve Bruce…
Birmingham City, 2001-02
Bruce himself took charge of a Birmingham side who were ninth in the First Division (today’s Championship) at the halfway stage of the 2001-02 season, with the club having dispensed with Trevor Francis in the October and having waited almost two months to officially appoint him after agreeing compensation with Crystal Palace, Bruce’s previous employers.
They had won 10 of their 23 games before Bruce took charge officially and, with neighbouring sides Albion and Wolves both ahead of them and chasing automatic promotion, Birmingham’s hopes rested on the play-offs.
Nine wins and just two losses over their final 15 games were enough to clinch fifth place before they sealed a famous play-off final victory thanks to Darren Carter’s decisive penalty in a shoot-out win over Norwich City in Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium.
“That season, we were floating around mid-table and when he (Bruce) came in, there was a real sense of, ‘We’re going to have a real go this year and see where we can get’,” Carter tells The Athletic.
“So my first impressions confirmed everything I’d seen of Steve on the pitch. He was a motivator, wouldn’t pull any punches and gave you honest answers.
“When he came in, he wanted us to just get some momentum going, and did that from the get-go.
“We got a couple of results early on and it snowballed from there, and he just rode it — he kept feeding us with confidence, telling us we were the form team and nobody would want to play us because of how well we were playing.
Anzeige
“Even in the play-offs, the message remained the same.
“There was never really a time where he got more serious. It was all about confidence and momentum, and he fed that all the way through.”
Wolverhampton Wanderers, 2002-03
After losing out on automatic promotion against all odds in 2001-02 to Gary Megson’s legendary West Brom team, Wolves suffered a hangover for the rest of the calendar year.
On New Year’s Day 2003 they were 10th in the table with just 10 wins from their 26 games, manager Dave Jones was under pressure and problems were festering in the camp.
“The season before, we’d dropped a bit of a clanger and there were a lot of problems with the club and the training ground,” Nathan Blake, then a striker for Wolves, tells The Athletic.
“A few players had fallen out, although not in a massive way. There were a few what I’d describe as small problems that all came together and made for a bad situation.
“We didn’t have our own changing facilities. The training ground was a lot different back then, so we would change with the general public, which could cause problems, especially if we hadn’t won on Saturday.
“A member of the public might make a comment and one of the players would take offence, and although it might sound minor, it’s the kind of thing that can lead to people thinking, ‘I don’t really want to be here’.”
Yet, as the season neared its conclusion, Wolves clicked into gear, going unbeaten in their final nine games to clinch a fifth-placed finish and then beating Reading and Sheffield United in the play-offs.
“There wasn’t anything that changed specifically,” says Blake. “It was just a case of senior players like myself, Denis Irwin, Paul Butler, Paul Ince, George Ndah and people like that coming together and saying, ‘We’ve got a job to do’.
“We’d all been brought in to win promotion and we knew if we could do that, then nobody could say anything. So we just had to try to make sure people weren’t dwelling on those small things.”
West Ham United, 2004-05
“The chairman, Terry Brown, and the chief executive, Paul Aldridge, were on the team bus when we went to Wigan,” says Jimmy Walker, the former West Ham goalkeeper.
“It was unheard of. As far as ‘Pards’ was concerned, the Grim Reaper might as well have been on the bus.”
West Ham made that trip to Wigan in April 2005 knowing defeat would almost certainly have spelt the end for their manager Alan Pardew.
They went 1-0 behind to a Jason Roberts goal early in the second half but equalised almost immediately through Teddy Sheringham before Marlon Harewood sealed a 2-1 away win with just over 20 minutes to go.
“In a lot of games that season, we’d capitulated,” says Walker, who was given a rare start that day in place of Stephen Bywater and kept his place all the way to the play-off final, in which he snapped his cruciate ligament but was carried around the pitch in celebration of a 1-0 win over Preston North End.
Anzeige
“That Wigan game was the weekend of Teddy’s 40th birthday and Pards told us to go and enjoy ourselves. We had Burnley away on the Tuesday, so the lads stayed up in Manchester, had a great time, and beat Burnley as well.
“Those few days away changed the course of our season. The togetherness after that was brilliant.”
Crystal Palace, 2012-13
Little was expected of a Palace side who had finished 17th in the previous season’s Championship, then lost their first three games of the 2012-13 campaign.
But the return to fitness of striker Glenn Murray coincided with a remarkable run of 11 wins and three draws from the next 14 games, taking them top of the table.
Palace did, though, suffer the loss of manager Dougie Freedman, who walked out to join Bolton in the midst of that superb run. They won their first five games after Freedman’s departure, but then just seven of the remaining 29 under his replacement Ian Holloway.
Fifth heading into the final game of the regular season, Palace were not assured of even a play-off place — but a little over three weeks later, they were celebrating promotion. Freedman’s Bolton, meanwhile, missed out on the play-offs on goal difference.
“There was a moment when we felt it had clicked but, when Dougie left, it rocked the boat,” Murray tells The Athletic.
“We sneaked into the play-offs and then we stumbled through them. We were playing Brighton, our arch-rivals, in the semi-finals.
“I had scored 30 goals that season and I snapped my ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) in the first leg, so going into the second leg, nobody gave us a chance — but we won, and then beat a really good Watford side in the final.
“It was a real rag-tag bunch of misfits that had come together and created magic.”
Norwich City, 2014-15
Alex Neil took over a Norwich side seventh in the Championship table after 24 games but still suffering a hangover from the previous season’s relegation.
The Scot galvanised his squad and almost clinched automatic promotion with just one defeat in their last 19 games. They picked themselves up from that disappointment to successfully navigate the play-offs and bounce straight back to the top flight anyway by beating Middlesbrough 2-0 at Wembley.
Anzeige
“We had really good players for that level, but before Alex Neil came in I think there was such a hangover from the Premier League,” says Russell Martin, the current Swansea City manager who was then Norwich’s captain.
“There were a few players (in the squad) who maybe thought they should still have been in the Premier League and, as a result, weren’t as good as they could have been.
“We were doing OK, but we were never right up there. Too many people were sleepwalking and expecting us to just get it done because of the quality we had in the squad.
“Alex came in and brought in such clarity and pulled us all together as a team — whereas before, there were too many individuals. If you weren’t on it you knew you wouldn’t play, irrespective of whether you were the highest earner or a young kid. If you deserved to play, you would play.
“He brought in a few players who hadn’t played much before, found a new role for Bradley Johnson, and we had a lot of firepower: people like Cameron Jerome, Lewis Grabban and Gary Hooper.”
Aston Villa, 2018-19
Bruce was the unlucky man to lose his job early on in Villa’s most recent promotion season, sacked in the October with his side 13th in the Championship after a run of one win in 10 games.
They rallied initially under his replacement Dean Smith but another run of one win in 10 left them 12th at the beginning of March.
From there, however, a remarkable 10-game winning run propelled Villa into the play-offs, which they eventually won, beating neighbours West Brom on penalties in the semi-finals and then Derby County 2-1 at Wembley.
Jack Grealish’s return to fitness and Smith’s decision to replace underperforming goalkeeper Lovre Kalinic with Jed Steer, recalled from loan to third-tier Charlton Athletic at mid-season, proved pivotal.
“Before the play-off final, you wouldn’t have known that some of the players had missed out in a final the previous year (Villa lost 1-0 to Fulham at Wembley) due to the belief and togetherness,” said defender Tyrone Mings, who was signed on loan from top-flight Bournemouth in the January then signed permanently that summer after helping secure promotion.
Anzeige
“Something just clicked. We worked hard on the training pitch and had a great set of players with individual attributes that can go and win you games.
“Build solid foundations to keep the ball out of the net: that is why I was brought in — to keep the ball out of the net — and we were able to do that on a more consistent basis.
“I think if you’re not conceding so many goals, it gives you a great platform to win games.”
(Main photos: Getty Images)