9:30am Thursday 11th March 2010
By Howard Griggs
TOMMY ELPHICK has shown a wider appreciation of Albion’s defensive unit.
Elphick and fellow centre-back Adam El-Abd stole the show with their performances in Tuesday’s goalless draw with fourth-placed Colchester.
But the midweek man-of-the-match insists the men outside them have made a huge contribution to a defence that has conceded just seven goals in the last nine games and kept back-to-back clean sheets.
Inigo Calderon and Marcos Painter were each signed by Gus Poyet to add competition to the full-back positions where Albion already had Andrew Whing, Gavin Hoyte, Jimmy McNulty and El-Abd as options.
But the duo have made the roles their own with a series of quality displays.
They have been ever-presents in the league since making their debuts away to Walsall in mid-January and Elphick believes they are fundamental to Albion’s recent revival.
He said: “Painter is the unsung hero. He has been superb for us, a steady-Eddie.
“He is seven out of ten every week and very rarely gets beaten by a winger.
“With Calderon he stretches the game for us and allows us to get up the pitch. He loves to have the ball and he brings a bit of pace to the side.
“We have good balance at the moment.”
Poyet has a dilemma when Adam Virgo completes his four-match suspension with Saturday’s home game with Swindon.
Virgo was in excellent form before the ban, which followed a second red card of the season at Leeds United, but will find it hard to dislodge the Elphick/El-Abd combination if they reproduce the form they showed at Colchester against the Robins at Withdean.
It is that competition for places that Poyet wanted when he took over and which is now spurring the Seagulls on to greater things.
Whing has joined Chesterfield on loan for the rest of the season but Hoyte and McNulty are among a cluster of players eager to get another first-team chance.
Elphick said: “To get where we want to get you are not going to have the same XI playing every week. You have got to have people to step in who are chomping at the bit.
“We have a good bunch of lads at the moment and people who are ready and waiting in the wings. They are waiting for their chance and training hard.
“It is not just at the back, we have got Fozzy on the bench, Chris Holroyd is proving a great signing and we have definitely got that tight-knit unit now.”
Elphick was keen to defer the praise after Monday’s draw at Colchester but was pleased with his contribution following a stop-start season.
He and El-Abd had their hands full with Colchester’s giant strikers Clive Platt and Kayode Odejayi but both were eventually replaced, such was the efforts of Albion’s centre-back pairing.
Elphick said: “Not only did they have to take off their two strikers, they are very good strikers with Championship experience who Colchester paid a lot of money for.
“When you see their numbers coming up you know you are doing something right.
“The two of them were extremely physical and you know when you have been in a game when you have played against them.
“They then brought on Lisbie and Gillespie who are totally different, they have great movement.
“You have got to keep yourself switched on to that because it is a totally different test.”
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