Albion Defeats Bologna 1-0: Hinshelwood Shines in Pre-Season

Albion went into their final pre-season outing without two of their star wide men – and walked out of the Amex with another win and a clearer idea of how to live without them.

Jack Hinshelwood’s smart finish on 59 minutes settled a 1-0 victory over Bologna and wrapped up an unbeaten summer, on a day when Albion had to improvise out wide and eventually found a route that worked.

Slow start, sharper edges

For 45 minutes, the game drifted. Albion kept the ball, but rarely hurt Bologna. The tempo was tidy rather than threatening, the movement in the final third too static to trouble Lukasz Skorupski.

Maxim De Cuyper, asked to offer something different on the left, had the first two efforts of the game. Both were on target, both safely gathered by the Bologna keeper. The Belgian also slipped Ferdi Kadioglu into a dangerous pocket with a clever pass, while Hinshelwood saw a volley saved after neat service from Olivier Boscagli. The patterns were there. The cutting edge was not.

Production from those wide areas carried extra weight with Yakuba Minteh joining Kaoru Mitoma on the injury list. The question hung over the Amex: where would the threat come from now?

Rutter roams, Albion click

The answer began to emerge after the break.

Georginio Rutter, deployed as a highly mobile No 9 or false nine, stopped playing like a fixed point and started stretching Bologna down the left touchline. He chased lost causes, held the ball up under pressure, then drove infield. One such move changed the game.

Rutter worked hard to keep possession on the flank, cut inside and was fouled as he advanced. The ball broke, and his low delivery across goal skidded through the six-yard box. Diego Gomez wisely stepped over it, letting it run to the edge of the area where Mats Wieffer arrived at full tilt.

Wieffer didn’t lash at it. He guided a low effort towards goal – more like a disguised pass than a shot – and Hinshelwood, alive to the opportunity and glancing across for the offside flag, darted in to turn it home. One touch, one goal, and suddenly a flat friendly had a pulse.

From there, Albion’s wide play caught fire. They began to get runners in behind the Bologna full-backs, most often Kadioglu and Gomez driving into space on either side. Wieffer slid a clever pass into Gomez, whose cut-back found Hinshelwood again, this time leaning back and blazing over. Gomez then turned provider once more as Kadioglu struck the post.

The difference from the first half was stark. Same possession, very different purpose.

New roles, new options

This was a day to experiment, and Albion used it. De Cuyper, starting high on the left in tandem with Kadioglu, looked like he will be asked to provide a distinct kind of threat from that side – more creator and carrier than traditional winger, but still aggressive in his positioning.

Later, an array of substitutions finally brought more orthodox width. Ibrahim Osman and Zadok Yohanna came on and immediately offered direct running and energy. Both looked bright, both willing to attack their full-back rather than simply recycle the ball.

Behind them, there was more quiet encouragement. Bart Verbruggen produced one sharp save in each half from Nicolo Carbiaghi to bank another clean sheet. In front of him, Luka Vuskovic and Boscagli again formed a composed pairing in the first period, suggesting the Dutch keeper has solid protection as the competitive games loom.

A hint of what comes next

This was not a spectacle to live long in the memory, but it did answer a pressing tactical question. Without Mitoma and Minteh, Albion still found ways to hurt a well-organised Bologna side by rotating their forwards, pushing full-backs high and trusting the intelligence of players like Wieffer, Gomez and Hinshelwood in the half-spaces.

Pre-season is about patterns and possibilities more than points. On this evidence, as Albion head towards Tromso, they leave the Amex with both – and with De Cuyper’s evolving role on the left looking like one of the most intriguing storylines of the weeks ahead.