Kevin Kilbane sets expectation for West Brom’s season, lifts lid on Albion days and puts Lee Hughes on par with Wayne Rooney

Baggies can seal top-two spot, says Kevin Kilbane

West Brom moved into the top six at the weekend with a stunning 3-2 comeback victory at Luton and are now 11/4 in the Championship promotion odds.

Kevin Kilbane spent two-and-a-half seasons with the Baggies at the end of the century before the winger joined Premiership side Sunderland in December 1999.

In the third part of an exclusive interview with Ladbrokes: Fanzone, the former Republic of Ireland international talked about the Baggies’ promotion prospects, reminisced about his time at The Hawthorns and gave his thoughts on Lee Hughes.

Click on the links for part one in which Kilbane discussed the Republic of Ireland and part two where he talked about his memories of playing alongside Chelsea boss Graham Potter at West Brom.

Top six should be a bare minimum expectation for West Brom now and automatic spot is on

The form West Brom are in right now is amazing. I’m so impressed with how Carlos Corberan has turned things around. They’ve got a good side there right now. I look out for a few teams’ results every week, and Albion are definitely one of them. Daryl Dike looks like he’s finally getting a bit of luck, and with that game time he’s starting to find the back of the net. There are a couple of Irish lads in there in Dara O’Shea and Jayson Molumby who I’ll always keep an eye on whenever they’re on TV.

We collated a heat map from Jayson Molumby's performance against Luton. 🗺

The results were as you might expect. 🐐 pic.twitter.com/jYKisrJsdP

— West Bromwich Albion (@WBA) January 15, 2023

They’ve certainly got a squad capable of challenging for the top six. They weren’t helped at all by their dreadful start to the season, but now that they’ve turned things around, I’d expect them at the very least to be in the play-off spots – that’s the least that supporters will expect of this team over the next few months. When you look back to the start of the season, those fans will have been expecting an automatic spot and, who’s to say, if they maintain this form, maybe they can close the gap on the top two… there’s plenty of time left in the season.

I wish I’d spent more time at the club… I was under a lot of pressure to leave

West Brom means a lot to me. I was a young man when I signed for the club, and to go into a club of that size, at a time when they were in a bad situation off the pitch, they needed investment… it was a really big challenge for everyone involved. But I had an amazing time there and I can’t thank that club enough for what they did for me and my development.

The coaches I worked under were incredible. Ray Harford signed me but I then worked under Denis Smith, he was brilliant for me, personally. He almost gave me a license to go out and do what I wanted on the pitch. Brian Little was another one who was incredible for me. So many great coaches have been involved with the club over the years, these are names who’ll perhaps skip the minds of some of the younger supporters, but they were great managers – who did great things for me on a personal level.

It would have been nice to have spent more time at The Hawthorns. In fact, I was actually speaking to them at one stage to go back and play for them but sadly it never materialised into anything. It might not have been the best move for me at the time, but I had such an amazing time there. It’s a place I wish I could have gone back to a little later on in my career.

We had a great team, a great core. In that first season, we were right up there in the top two in the first half of the season. We were going so well, but things just flatlined around Christmas time and we fell off it a little bit. We were always around the play-offs, in the top 10, but we were never able to push on. We probably needed someone to come in and take hold of the whole club, not just on the pitch but off it too – but that didn’t happen while I was there.

I remember when I was sold in 1999, I was actually under pressure to leave the club at the time, because they needed the money. Brian Little was manager and he explained he just couldn’t let me go for the fee that was being offered. He was adamant I was worth more than that – I think it was around £2.5m. But the club just needed cash, they were desperate for me to go. I had a couple of offers but ended up going to Sunderland because Peter Reid offered me everything I wanted to hear.

West Brom have never really got out of the position they’ve been in. They’ve obviously spent a lot of time in the Premier League, but they’ve been up and down so much over the years. It’s almost as if it’s been more of a frugal approach from the board. They’ve never really gone for it in that respect. I’d love nothing more than to see West Brom in the Premier League, not going up for a season and going straight back down, but a sustained team in the top flight, because for a club of that size, it’s where I believe they should be.

I’ve played with Wayne Rooney and Robbie Keane but Lee Hughes is up there as one of the best goalscorers

I think we paid somewhere in the region of £200k for Hughesy [Lee Hughes] – Lee was a Baggie through and through. All he wanted to do was play for West Brom – that was him, they were his team, and he showed that every time he stepped out in that shirt.

He was in and out of the team across the first six months of his career and he was still scoring goals for us. I can remember in his second season, he had to score a certain amount of goals before Christmas to get this car that was up for grabs – it was something like that. If he got to 20 goals, he’d get this car, I think it was a Mazda. He was absolutely flying through the first half of the season amd even when we weren’t playing well, or if we’d lost, you could guarantee Hughesy had scored. But he just missed out on this car. You’d speak to him about it afterwards and he was absolutely gutted he missed out on it!

It’s amazing how some players think. It wasn’t a £100k motor or anything like that, it was just a Mazda. He just had this competition with himself and that was his motivation for the first half of the season.

I look back on my career, and I’ve played with some incredible strikers over the years; Wayne Rooney, Robbie Keane, Kevin Phillips, Niall Quinn, Emile Heskey. All of them are brilliant players who are all rightly well known for how great they were. But I would comfortably put Hughesy right up there alongside those names as the best I’ve ever played alongside in terms of goalscorers. He was excellent to play with, a brilliant lad in the dressing room and he was West Brom through and through.