Ten-man West Brom hold on for an hour at Pride Park and go top of the Championship

Ten-man West Brom hold on for an hour at Pride Park and go top of the Championship

In the seventh minute, Jimmy-Jay Morgan broke down the right and whipped in a cross; Aune Heggebo met it at the near post and rattled the Derby net. The whole move took about five seconds, from West Brom winning the ball in their own half to the ball sitting in the goal. I noted the timing of it because it shaped everything that followed: the visitors did not need possession, they needed a gap behind the home defence and a well-timed run.

Then, on 34 minutes, Brayann Pereira made a clumsy challenge on Charlie Taylor, collected a second yellow card and left the pitch. He pulled his shirt over his head as he walked down the tunnel. Nobody on the bench stood up. Pride Park roared for a beat and then fell quiet, and from that point West Brom played a man down for more than an hour.

Derby came into this game off a defeat at their own ground against Swansea. For a side still searching for rhythm in English football's second tier, that was a wound that had not healed, and the visit of West Brom was a chance to close it. The visitors, by contrast, arrived at Pride Park knowing that a hard away day would shift their position in the table if they could hold on to the points. The match came after the international break, and signs of fatigue were plain in the midfield duels of the second half.

One thing must be stated about the data: no xG or PPDA figures were published for this match. What follows therefore rests on direct observation of specific situations, on how the shape shifted and on the decisive moments, rather than on a statistics table.

After the red card, West Brom dropped into a block of four defenders, four midfielders and a lone striker. They accepted ceding the ball, cleared long towards the striker instead of playing short, and preferred to force the ball wide rather than clear across their own box. What preserved the three points for West Brom was not fighting spirit but the near-constant distance between the two centre-backs and the two central midfielders across more than an hour with ten men. Every time Derby played into the channel between those lines, a midfielder dropped in to close it.

Derby dominated possession, pushed both full-backs high and funnelled the ball down the flanks. Lars-Jorgen Salvesen was the main target and he headed the ball twice, one of them drifting wide after the interval. Ozoh delivered a good cross from the right, awkward enough to force the visitors' defence to hack it clear. In added time Henrik Meister created a scramble in front of goal and Nat Phillips was the man who cleared it. Separately, Nolan Galves had to leave the pitch injured, leaving an already thin visiting side further stretched.

Taken as a whole, the difference lay not in how often Derby put the ball into the box but in the quality of the final delivery. The ball reached Salvesen in the right area but with a defender tight on him, and with no home midfielder willing to attack the box, every plan stopped at the edge of the penalty area. A team playing a man down only survives when the opponent agrees to play exactly the kind of football that team has prepared for. West Brom were prepared for crosses, zonal defending and long clearances. Derby obliged.

The familiar telling will call this a victory of character. That telling is partly right, but it hides the other half of the story: the hosts had no alternative beyond working the ball wide and crossing. With Salvesen tightly marked, none of the attacking midfielders drove into the box to create a second option. The ball circulated around the penalty area on sideways passes, and time ran in the visitors' favour. Derby's volume of crosses did not come with a matching volume of clear chances, and that gap is the whole match.

The home side deserve a counterweight here. On the balance of play Derby merited at least a point, and taking nothing from this game will be hard for them to accept. But the table does not record the word "deserved". If West Brom repeat this kind of match a few more times, results will stop falling their way, because Pereira picked up his second yellow in an area where there was no need to commit, having already been warned by the first booking. That is no longer an isolated accident if it recurs.

Signals worth tracking over the coming rounds: how many away points West Brom collect once their defence cannot sit deep; whether Derby change their attacking structure at Pride Park or keep living on crosses; and whether Pereira adjusts how he challenges in midfield. A table-topping position won with ten men is a fine line in the news ticker, but its real value only shows in the next round, when West Brom must win with eleven.