A number of West Brom fans have turned to Twitter to savage the performance of centre back Kyle Bartley after he played his part in the club’s win over Preston North End on Saturday.
The Baggies saw off the Whites, who sit bottom of the Championship table, in a 3-2 thriller at Deepdale, with goals from Jay Rodriguez and Dwight Gayle sandwiching an own goal from Ben Davies to secure the three points for Darren Moore and his men.
However, despite the victory the Hawthorns faithful were left fuming at the display of Bartley on social media, as he allowed Preston to net twice.
This is Futbol has gathered a selection of the supporters’ tweets:
Bartley‘s been an embarrassment this half, Hegazi better apart from that pass earlier #wba
— Lewis Botfield (@BotfieldLewis) September 29, 2018
Mears is a waste of space and Bartley is an accident waiting to happen
— Phil Wain (@Philfrombrum) September 29, 2018
https://twitter.com/MarkColley62/status/1046049273715085313
I came down to look for you, but it was chaos and I couldn’t see through the smoke!?
We couldn’t defend Mother Theresa!?
At least 5/6 of ours just weren’t at it. How bad does Bartley look??— Adrian Deacon (@AdeDeacon) September 29, 2018
First half like pulling teeth.. second half marginally better. Bartley was abysmal. Decent team performance really, another 3 points grind out. Top of the league – happy days x
— Sam (@mrserot0n1nman) September 29, 2018
https://twitter.com/aIfwba/status/1046049350697308160
Second half we dominated! So comfortable! 3-2 makes them look far better than what they were… Bartley was awful though!
— hannah ???? (@Hannanar) September 29, 2018
Opinion
Yikes! The West Brom faithful have not held back when it comes to Bartley’s display, and it sounds as if they were the manager the former Swansea man would not be seen in the starting XI for quite some time. To be fair, he was not at the races against the side propping up the rest of the Championship and if he cannot put on his A-game against a team who have been struggling so much already, how is he going to perform when the Baggies come up against a quality of opposition challenging at the top of the table? He seriously needs to knuckle down and get his own form sorted out sooner rather than later, for at the moment he is a weak point which the opposition could well try to expose. Moore either needs to have complete trust in his centre back or consider benching him – either temporarily or on a more permanent basis – to give someone else the chance to shine where he is failing to do so.