The Path Of Most Resistance

If there's one thing Albion fans know about, it's doing things the hard way. Players and managers come and go, but the central ethos at the heart of the club always remains: there's no point in winning anything unless you make things insanely difficult for yourself first. This is, after all, a club who missed seven out of the eleven penalties awarded them in the 2001/02 season, before seeing their entire promotion campaign come down to one final penalty...in the last minute of stoppage time...which, if missed, would gift promotion to their fiercest rivals instead. If I didn't know better, I'd swear the Rolling Stones wrote the song 19th Nervous Breakdown about that day.

Nor was that an isolated incident. Years of flirting with promotion and relegation have given us numerous final-day dramas. Even in 2009, as we shambled towards inevitable relegation under Tony Mowbray, a late-season winning streak suddenly gave us a flicker of cruel hope amidst the despair, prompting one of my fellow Baggies to moan: "Bloody Albion. Can't even get relegated without doing it the hard way."

So no surprises today when taking a 2-0 lead after 25 minutes - against a QPR side who have all the gear but no idea - turned out not to be an indication of plain sailing ahead. Every time we looked in danger of winning the game at a stroll, the team bravely found a way to let the opposition back into it, inducing panic attacks at every available opportunity. It shows how far we've come that we clung on for the 3-2 win, when Albion sides of yesteryear would undoubtedly have pulled out all the stops to go on and lose the match.

Of course, all of this is what makes football so riveting, so I suppose we should be grateful. At least, that's something to keep telling yourself when the nurse faints over your blood pressure results.