Where are the Albion at right now?

Just one defeat in the last eight matches. Comprehensive victories home and away against Ajax, including a dream night at the Johan Cruyff Arena. A perfectly respectable top ten place in the Premier League table. Second spot with two to play in a super tough Europa League group.

Or, zero wins in six league matches. Sunday afternoons at Falmer giving us flashbacks to the XG trauma years.

Which of these versions of the Albion is really us right now, and how worried should we be?

Zoom out, if you can, and everything still looks rosy. European football (European football!) taken in our collective stride. A team and a club that came of age at the Stade Velodrome and forced a Totaalvoetbal origin club to reconsider how football could and should be played. Bloed, Zweet, En (Ajax) Tranen.

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Ansu Fati playing his way into form and fitness. The latest crop of starlets blossoming into fully fledged icons: Van Hecke, Adingra, and Baleba too when he’s given some minutes. The same spot, give or take, in the league as we found ourselves occupying this time last year.

But zoom in and it’s hard not to be concerned. We haven’t won a Premier League game since late September, which suggests something is going awry. Is it the horrendous injury list and the impact of the additional midweek European fixtures? Bad luck? Opposition managers implementing grotty anti-De Zerbian tactics? Uneven team selections and the volume of player rotation we’ve seen so far this season, goalkeepers included?

Jason Steele as Premier League goalkeeper is one of the great coaching innovations of our time. To practise pure unfiltered original De Zerbianism you need not just ten outfield players who can withstand the press, but eleven.

A press-resistant goalie. Not simply a goalkeeper with a decent touch, but someone who can operate as an outfield player when the opposing attackers and midfielders apply some heat. Audacious, totally original, and perhaps only fully achievable with Jason Steele on the pitch.

Yet what we have witnessed this season are team’s refusing to press, or at least refusing to press us deep into our own half. Which begs the question, does this render the innovation obsolete?

Bart Verbruggen is also a fine passer of a football. He’s additionally now the owner of the Dutch International jersey, for keeps, which suggests he’s got something about him.

The extent to which conceding soft goals can be attributed to whichever of the two goalkeepers has been selected is open to interpretation, but the fact that too many softies are finding their way into our net is incontrovertible.

AEK’s three goals, Man City’s opener, the majority of the goals scored at Villa Park, Marseille’s second, Everton’s opener, arguably both the Fulham and Sheffield United equalisers. None of these were unstoppable thunderbastards.

Would an Albion team featuring an settled uninjured defensive unit have prevented fewer of these goals from flying in?

On the injuries, well losing Pervis for such a long period was unfortunate and unforeseen. But losing his understudy (Lamptey) was not. I love you Tariq, but relying on a player who has missed so much football in the last three seasons is asking for trouble.

We’re also missing King Solomon, big time. More specifically March’s incredible versatility and dependability. Name another Premier League player who can operate at a truly elite level as an orthodox winger, a wide forward, a wing-back, and a full-back (down the left hand side or right hand side of the pitch)?

We can also now (possibly or possibly not) add Mitoma to the long list of missing players, which includes attackers Prince Enciso and Danny Welbz. Little wonder then that we have scored just seven goals in the last six league games. This is not the free-scoring Albion of earlier this season, let alone last.

Evan’s form has dropped off a cliff and/or he’s perma-injured. Pedro’s finishing is poor for someone who cost £30m (despite the exquisite penalty work), which leaves Ansu Fati as our sole number nine, except he’s not really a conventional number nine.

Meanwhile, in an upscale restaurant in central Stuttgart, Deniz Undaz sits down for some celebratory grilled meats to mark yet another successful goal-scoring appearance in a Die Schwaben shirt.

Or perhaps the recent sketchy league form can be attributed to the tactics employed by opposition managers this season, who have adjusted their ambitions in accordance with our newfound status?

Bournemouth are rubbish, but their manager did at least justify his hipster manager wardrobe by coming up with something innovative in a (failed) attempt to spoil. Press but don’t press. Stand high up the pitch, but instead of engaging our defenders sort of get in the way when we’re attempting to pass to each other.

Fulham tried something similar with added shithousery (very much looking forward to March ‘24 when this really annoying hex will be broken, dear Lord). And Sheffield United took things a stage further by refusing to leave their half of the pitch for the first 45 minutes of the game.

Which brings us nicely to Nottingham Forest. We lost this fixture last season because the team were knackered, and Roberto overestimated the squad’s ability to play two consecutive games in a four-day period. We weren’t outplayed. We didn’t lose to a team playing sumptuous attacking football.

No, the team that plays sumptuous attacking football is of course us. BHAFC. Or at least it should be.

Roberto’s football - our football - was so life-affirming and righteous because it transcended whatever obstacle was laid down to halt our progress. Footballing, bureaucratic or spiritual. The heart, the blood, and the balls.

Choose not to be baited in and we’ll hunt you down instead. The most press resistant team the top-flight has ever seen could also deploy one of the canniest pressing operations in the league. Sometimes within the same passage of play.

To back off and allow us to play is to commit suicide, yet attempting to dominate us through possession is an act of futility.

This pause in the season has come at the right time, giving the injured players two weeks of healing time, but also for us to take stock and remember exactly who we are and what we do.

The Albion that will run out at the City Ground on Saturday at 3pm is still that same beautiful attacking football team that we all fell so deeply in love with, led by the most exciting manager in world football. Possibly the best.

We’re almost guaranteed some form of European football after Christmas, and sit just two points away from a Europa League spot in the Premier League, with a bridgeable gap to the Champions League places.

Fati, Van Hecke, Verbruggen, and Baleba all looking the part. Dunk closing in on full fitness. Enciso and Pervis two weeks closer to returning. Evan Jacob Moder has been spotted in the first-team squad.

Where are the Albion right now? Exactly where we want to be, thank you very much.

Refreshments

Nottingham away (Forest or County) adventures previously featured drinks in the Larwood & Voce, a massive barn pub adjacent to Trent Bridge Cricket Ground.

The principal feature of this pub was an unusual half and half set up: home fans to one side, away fans down the other. A matchday boozer arrangement that was once commonplace on our travels but now increasingly hard to find.

However the Larwood, like everywhere else close to the ground, is now strictly home fans only. This includes the excellent Stratford Haven.

The default away option is now a hospitality lounge over the river at Meadow Lane (Notts County’s stadium, but you knew that anyway). Expect warm pints of Shipstones Ale or Labatt’s served in a brightly lit windowless lounge bar.

Away fans are also welcome at the Nottingham Rowing Club, should you fancy drinking in a soulless function room overlooked by portraits of Mathew Pinsent, Ken Clarke and Steve Stone.

There’s also Pound Store Boxpark The Big Shed (also on the County side of the Trent) if you are able to breach the door staff, and the idea of sitting in a drafty opensided hanger on a cold November East Midlands afternoon appeals.

The Nottingham Legend is the option for flat-roofed pub aficionados or you can experience some authentic 1980s British culture in living history museum Hooters.

So many great options to choose from.

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