A hoodoo, bogie team – or whatever other fantasy name they
can be called – is essentially that. I don’t buy into them one bit.
If a team is regularly losing to ANother team it’s because
one of two things: they’re a better team; or their playing style is hard for the
other team to compete with – thus getting the better of said team.
That’s it.
There is no mythical curse that falls over The Hawthorns or
The Britannia every time the two teams clash. It’s the fact that Ryan Shawcross
and Robert Huth et al systematically fouled the game into submission.
There is no mystical veil that encompasses the Liberty Stadium every time the Albion clash with Swansea. That one’s down to them
passing WBA off the park.
And there’s certainly no malevolent charm that permeates West
Brom’s players when they visit Craven Cottage. WBA get pasted there
through fielding an abundance of ineptitude or vertically challenged
back-lines.
The furore that follows these ‘bogie teams’ around – where pundits,
having conducted their mandatory six minutes of research before punditry, dig out
Wikipedia stats about a team’s fortunes – are a load of rubbish, too.
Just because WBA lost a game to Oxford United in 1967, and
then lost the next time they played in 1998 (imaginatively) doesn't mean that
there’s a curse halting the team’s progress. In 2012 the squad is completely
different to the one whom played the previous encounters and therefore the previous match has no bearing on this one.
What there is, however, is a mental block which pervades
through from the fans and media to the team whom are lead to believe that they cannot
win – and that isn't their fault. They expect to lose because they’re told the
fates won’t let them.
It’s a simple fact (now starting to sound like Rafa Benitez’s
infamous rant) that tactics and performances - of Billy Jones and Peter
Odemwingie particularly - conspired to gift Swansea and unassailable lead. And Stoke’s
tactical fouling strangled any life that the Albion line-up picked to combat
Stoke City’s size could muster.
No hoodoo, no bogie team – just players not playing well.
The quicker people realise this, the better it can be for
all of us to just get on with our team’s ineptitudes. Barcelona must have a
curse hanging over everybody else and Queen’s Park Rangers have everyone else’s
curse, if we buy into hoodoo hysteria.
“I’m talking about facts…”
