Albion boss goes ballistic

2:51pm Sunday 28th October 2007

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Hartlepool 1 Albion 2.

It is pretty unusual for a manager to go "ballistic" at his players when they have just completed a hat-trick of away wins.

A dressing room dressing down from Dean Wilkins for his young Albion side was, on this occasion, understandable.

They came perilously close to blowing what should have been a routine victory from a goal up and a man up halfway through a contest charged with emotion.

Inexperience showed in the second half. Instead of killing the game by controlling possession and making the most of countless attacking opportunities, they allowed Hartlepool's ten-men, driven on by a vociferous crowd, to believe they could grab a result.

The hosts craved reward for their desperate efforts to honour the memory of 20-year-old midfielder Michael Maidens, killed in a car accident eight days earlier.

An improbable share of the spoils beckoned with a late penalty harshly awarded against Tommy Elphick before Bas Savage, unpredictable as ever, spared Albion's blushes deep into added time.

It was always going to be a difficult afternoon in the drab north-east, with the untimely death of Maidens still so raw.

Both teams made it even more punishing for themselves, Albion with their second half naivety and Hartlepool by pressing the self-destruct button not once but twice via Ben Clark's early own goal and Willie Boland's dismissal.

Elphick, who performed once again with a maturity beyond his years, acknowledged where it almost went wrong for the Seagulls.

"We should have capitalised when they were down to ten men and been in a more comfortable position than we were," admitted the young centre half.

"We could have been two or three up but we are young and our decision making at times let us down. That will come.

"There was an electric atmosphere because of what happened (to Maidens). It was a horrible situation for Hartlepool to be in and they came out firing.

"The own goal spurred them on even more and every time they took a knock they came back stronger and harder. People will say we were lucky but it has been done to us enough times and I think we deserved the rub of the green."

Nobody more so than Elphick and, for that matter, his partner Adam El-Abd, more of which later. Elphick was certainly entitled to feel hard done by when, with four minutes left, he was penalised for using a hand to charge down a fiercely struck volley from substitute Andy Monkhouse.

Richard Barker sent Michel Kuipers the wrong way from the spot, the former Seagull's sixth goal and fourth penalty of the season seemingly guaranteeing salvation for Hartlepool.

They were reckoning without Savage, dropped from the starting line-up but brought on early in the second half for the injured Alex Revell. He was threatening to lose control of the ballinside the Hartlepool area when he ploughed through a challenge.

The Albion faithful behind the goal, half expecting they might need to duck, were sent wild with delight instead as Savage drilled low and right-footed beyond the despairing dive of Hartlepool's Danish custodian Jan Budtz.

Savage's opportunism exacerbated the folly of Boland. On the stroke of half-time the former Cardiff midfielder, taking exception to a strong but fair challenge from Dean Cox, retaliated by kicking out at Albion's miniature magician right under the nose of the linesman.

It was, as Wilkins said, "a silly thing to do" and Jonathan Moss had no choice other than to show Boland a red card, as former Premiership ref turned local radio pundit Jeff Winter angrily pointed out from the press box in a heated exchange with an elderly and protesting Hartlepool supporter. Boland was not alone in contributing so blatantly to only Hartlepool's second home defeat. Clark, under no pressure, headed an apparently harmless cross from Cox into his own net. The 13th minute was certainly unlucky for the ex-Sunderland stopper.

El-Abd would readily sympathise following his late blunder which condemned Albion to that unfortunate home defeat by Leeds.

It was a big call by Wilkins to keep faith with El-Abd and leave the fit-again Guy Butters sitting on the bench but it paid off. El-Abd excelled at the back.

His only mistake this time was at the other end of the pitch, when he glaringly missed the target with a free header in the second half from a Matt Richards corner which should have both doubled the cushion and ended an extraordinary 13-month goal drought for Albion defenders dating back to El-Abd's strike against Leyton Orient at Withdean.

El-Abd and fellow members of the back four union will be annoyed that a potential fourth successive shut-out on the road was ruined by Moss's needless desire to cancel out a justified red card for Boland with a dubious penalty decision.

Wilkins was more concerned by Albion's failure to close the game out. He said: "The more you keep giving the ball away and back to the opposition and they keep sticking it in your box then, bearing in mind a player has been sent-off, the more likely it is the ref will give them something.

"It did not surprise me - it was our own poor play which drew them level. It (the penalty) looked harsh but I felt it was inevitable. Sometimes you stand on the side of the pitch, you= look into the players' eyes and you can sense something is about to happen but you feel almost powerless to do anything about it.

"In the second half we couldn't retain possession well enough at times. When we did we carved them open and created good chances but didn't finish it off."

Wilkins can be a hard taskmaster. Some of the players who have risen with him from the youth team will remember him expressing disappointment with a winning performance at Blackburn in the FA Youth Cup.

He apologised then by buying cakes and it would not surprise me if now, 48 hours on, another trip to the bakers is in the offing, especially as Butters celebrates his 38th birthday tomorrow.

Albion could have done with the nous of Butters in the second half but none of the defenders deserved to be substituted and it would have appeared absurdly cautious if they had been, considering the numerical supremacy.

An upset stomach meant that Wilkins, even if he wanted to, could not call upon the experience of Nicky Forster up front either.

It was left to Forster's former Reading team-mate to snatch the glory. Savage's second goal since the end of March will hopefully be the prelude to many more from Wilkins' collectively misfiring forwards. If that happens then Albion really could be in business.

Was Wilkins right to go ballistic?