After last season’s disappointment in the play-off semi-final, the last thing West Bromwich Albion fans want is a repeat of narrowly missing out on promotion to the Premier League.

Well, there is one stat in particular that won’t fill Baggies supporters with the greatest of hopes and may, in fact, remind them all too well of the start of last season.

10 games into the new Championship season, West Brom are sitting pretty in the third spot in the Championship.

Before last night’s narrow 1-0 defeat to Leeds United, Slaven Bilic’s side hadn’t lost a single game. Now, they have earned 19 points after five wins and four draws.

That is all well and good until you discover that at the same point in the 18/19 season – when they ended up finishing fourth and losing to eventual winners Aston Villa in the play-off semi-final – they had 20 points.

Interestingly, though, having a fewer point isn’t the stat that should be concerning Baggies fans. Without question, West Brom missed out on promotion, last season, because of their shambolic defensive record.

Last campaign, they had the joint worst defensive record in the top half of the table despite ending up in the top four.

To avoid the same thing happening again, the club made some changes. Bilic came in and so did a new-look defence.

On their 10^th game of last season – in a 3-2 away win at Preston – only Kyle Bartley has managed to retain his place for the 10th game of this following season. They have replaced Kieran Gibbs, Ahmen Hegazi, Craig Dawson and Tyrone Mears for the young Nathan Ferguson, Semi Ajayi and Darnell Furlong.

So, have all the changes worked for West Brom?

Quite simply, no. The stat to send shivers down the spines of all Biggies supporters is that they have actually kept exactly the same number of clean sheets than they managed at the same stage last season… One.

As chance would have it, West Brom recorded their first clean sheet of the season in a 2-0 win on their ninth game of the season. This season, they have done exactly the same thing in a 2-0 win at Queens Park Rangers.

The parallels are uncanny and might be too damning for West Brom to simply ignore.

The reality is, they’ve brought in an excellent coach, new defenders and still have the same poor defensive record that, ultimately, let them down last season.

Every cloud has a silver lining, though, and the one that West Brom fans might be thankful to see is that their team has conceded one goal fewer than they had with the same amount of games played last season… Make of that what you will.