Albion v AFC Bournemouth

On the opening day of the season, away back in August, I recall picking up the matchday programme, turning to the manager’s notes and reading a textbook use of the “Let’s get to 40 points as quick as we can and then see where we go from there” cliché.

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Of course, the manager in question was Alan Pardew at Crystal Palace, but those sentiments would have been swirling around the minds of at least another dozen of his Premier League brethren, approaching that first game of the season with the usual heady mix of excitement and trepidation at what might lie ahead for them in the months to come.

As it turns out, his opposite number on the day, Tony Pulis, need have had no worries on that score, although I’m not entirely sure he felt that way at the time, even after we had set off in pursuit of the 40 with victory at Selhurst Park.

And when our season reached its nadir, with just four points harvested from four games and a League Cup exit at Northampton to boot, even one who has been there, done it and collected a wardrobe full of t-shirts, might have had a few causes for concern.

But the goings on since then have revealed that September 10th 2016 was just a staging post, the moment where it was darkest before the dawn, for since then, the Throstles have been a beast transformed.

The irony is that that grim afternoon came on the south coast in a 1-0 defeat to AFC Bournemouth, the side that we finally beat for the first time in four Premier League meetings to reach that all-important 40 point mark. A well deserved win it was too, for all that Ben Foster had to produce heroics at the death to preserve our slender lead.