Jack Grealish, Ollie Watkins and John McGinn of Aston Villa warm up ahead of the Premier League match against West Brom at The Hawthorns. Photograph: Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images

3 min Phillips will take and cunningly looks to go under the wall, which blocks his effort without difficulty.

2 min My word, competence is at a premium here. Martinez rushes to the edge of his box to field a long punt from Gibbs, and it’s so obvious that it won’t drop into the box but he catches it anyway. Free-kick West Brom, just outside the left edge of the box.

1 min Gosh, West Brom switch off at the back when Sawyers loses the ball, and Watkins nearly sneaks in behind before O’Shea clears up.

1 min Off we go.

The players take a knee. Black lives matter – and black lives matter too.

Updated 

Villa have won four away games this season and just off the top of my head, ought really to won at West Ham, though they lost. This is a really hard first outing for Not Inconsiderable Samuel.

Here come the players....

I sort of like the day-glo ref’s top. Do I need an intervention?

Given West Brom’s formation – Sawyers in front of the back four, then Livermore (and the more attack-minded Gallagher) in front of him – my guess is that Allardyce will give his full-backs licence to, er, “bomb on”. He’s got to change something to get them scoring, because the problem isn’t just one of chance conversion but chance creation. And because they don’t have the class to just make it happen, weight of numbers will be extremely important.

Like I said...

Daniel Harris(@DanielHarris)

And a favourite Ashes interview: Ian Bell smashes the world "like I said" record into tiny little pieces. pic.twitter.com/qvEOJ4SACX

November 22, 2017

Allardyce begins his first pre-match interview with a “Like I said”. Err... Anyway, he carries on by saying he’s not had time to change anything, but the team need to score more and concede fewer, which is a novel idea.

Dean Smith, meanwhile, says West Brom will be looking for “that new manager bounce” and that his team are in good form.He notes that Craig Shakespeare, one of his assistants, knows Allardyce well.