Albion 1 Bologna 0: Hinshelwood's Goal Highlights New Tactical Plan
Albion finished pre-season with a win and, more importantly, a clue about how they might live without their star wingers.
No Kaoru Mitoma. No Yakuba Minteh. Yet they still found joy down the flanks at the Amex, where Jack Hinshelwood’s 59th-minute strike sealed a 1-0 victory over Bologna and rounded off their summer schedule.
For 45 minutes, though, it did not look like a night for attacking invention.
Slow start, static shape
Albion saw plenty of the ball before the break but did little with it. The tempo sagged, movement ahead of the ball was limited and Bologna were rarely stretched. Possession was neat, safe – and largely harmless.
Maxim De Cuyper, starting wide on the left and dovetailing with Ferdi Kadioglu, carried much of the early threat. The Belgian had the first two efforts of the game, both saved by Lukasz Skorupski, and later slipped a smart pass inside which released Kadioglu into space.
Hinshelwood also drew a save with a volley after an intelligent delivery from Olivier Boscagli. Those were half-chances rather than clear openings, and they summed up Albion’s first half: tidy patterns, but no real cutting edge.
Rutter roams, the game opens up
The mood changed after the interval. The game loosened, both sides began to punch a little harder in the final third and Albion finally started to get in behind the Bologna full-backs.
Georginio Rutter drove that shift. Nominally a No.9, occasionally a false nine, in reality he was everywhere. He drifted out to the left touchline, worked relentlessly to keep the ball alive, then surged infield with purpose.
The pressure finally told.
Rutter was fouled after one of those forays, but not before he had swept a low ball across the face of goal. Diego Gomez left it, the ball rolled on, and for a moment it looked as if the chance had gone. Then Mats Wieffer arrived on the edge of the box, thundering into view.
His response was cool, not wild: a low, placed effort that looked as much like a pass as a shot. Hinshelwood, alive to the possibility and glancing across for the offside flag, darted in to turn it home.
One incisive move. One clean finish. And suddenly the whole stadium felt different.
Wide threat without the headline wingers
That goal underlined what had been building since the restart. Albion were now consistently working promising positions on both flanks, often with Kadioglu and Gomez exploiting the spaces behind Bologna’s full-backs.
Wieffer slid a clever pass into Gomez, who cut the ball back for Hinshelwood – this time the midfielder fired over when well placed. Gomez then turned creator again as Kadioglu struck the post, another warning sign for the visitors.
All of this came with Minteh added to an injury list that already included Mitoma, and with the question hanging over Albion’s ability to threaten from wide areas without them. On this evidence, the answers may come from different profiles rather than like-for-like replacements.
De Cuyper, operating high on the left, looked less like a traditional winger and more like a left-sided playmaker, picking passes and timing his runs. Indications from this final friendly are that he will be asked to provide a different kind of threat on that side – less raw pace, more craft and combination play.
Later, an array of substitutions brought more orthodox width. Ibrahim Osman and Zadok Yohanna came on and both offered direct running and a willingness to engage their full-backs. The shape of Albion’s attack shifted again, this time with more traditional chalk-on-the-boots options.
Verbruggen shuts the door, defence settles
At the other end, Bart Verbruggen did what he needed to do. He produced one sharp stop in each half from Nicolo Carbiaghi to preserve another clean sheet and underline his status as the man in possession of the gloves.
In front of him, Luka Vuskovic and Boscagli again looked a solid pairing during the first half. Their reading of the game and comfort on the ball gave Albion a calm base from which to build, even when the attacking patterns were still forming.
The final whistle left Albion with another pre-season win, a shut-out, and a clearer idea of how their left side might function in the weeks ahead. The names out wide may change. The threat, on this showing, does not have to.
