Albion Defeats Bologna 1-0: Hinshelwood's Goal Highlights Tactical Shift

Albion went into their final pre-season outing without two of their headline wingers – and walked away with another win after finding a different route down the flanks.

Jack Hinshelwood’s tidy finish on 59 minutes settled a 1-0 victory over Bologna at the Amex, wrapping up an unbeaten summer and offering a glimpse of how this side might attack when the usual wide threats are missing.

Slow start, sharp switch

For 45 minutes, Albion moved the ball but went nowhere. Possession was neat, the patterns familiar, yet Bologna were rarely stretched and the home side looked short of ideas in the final third.

That changed abruptly after the break.

The Seagulls began to punch holes down both wings, getting runners in behind Bologna’s full-backs, with Ferdi Kadioglu and Diego Gomez repeatedly finding space high up the pitch. The tempo rose, the crowd woke up, and the game finally felt like a contest.

The breakthrough came from that renewed energy out wide. Georginio Rutter, operating as a roaming No.9, drifted to the left touchline, worked tirelessly to protect the ball and then drove infield, drawing a foul as he went. Play continued and his low ball across the face of goal skipped past Gomez and everyone else in the middle.

It looked to be fizzling out until Mats Wieffer arrived on the edge of the area, steaming onto the loose ball. His measured, low effort – more like a slide-rule pass than a shot – was turned in by Hinshelwood, who had timed his run and then looked across anxiously for the offside flag. It stayed down. Albion finally had their lead.

That single moment separated a flat first half from a much livelier second.

New faces, new angles

With Yakuba Minteh joining Kaoru Mitoma on the injury list, all eyes were on how Albion would manufacture width. The answer, at least here, came from a reshuffled left side and a more fluid front line.

Maxim De Cuyper, starting high on the left and linking with Kadioglu, offered a different sort of threat. The Belgian had Albion’s first two efforts of the game, both saved by Lukasz Skorupski, and later slipped a clever pass inside which released Kadioglu into a dangerous crossing position.

Hinshelwood, already heavily involved before his goal, forced a save with a volley after smart service from Olivier Boscagli. Yet for all that possession in the opening period, Albion rarely carved Bologna open. The patterns were there; the cutting edge was not.

Once the interval passed, that changed. The movement sharpened, the runs from deep were better timed and the full-backs suddenly had problems they hadn’t faced before.

Wieffer, increasingly influential between the lines, picked out Gomez with a precise pass in behind, and the winger’s cut-back found Hinshelwood again, only for the midfielder to blaze over this time. Gomez then turned creator once more as Kadioglu rattled the post from the left, underlining just how dangerous those wide pockets had become.

An array of substitutions added more natural width. Ibrahim Osman and Zadok Yohanna came on and both looked lively, hugging the touchline, driving at defenders and stretching Bologna in ways Albion had not managed early on.

Solid base, different threat

At the other end, Bart Verbruggen did what he needed to do. The Dutch goalkeeper produced one sharp stop in each half from Nicolo Carbiaghi, preserving a clean sheet that never felt under serious siege but still needed moments of concentration.

In front of him, Luka Vuskovic and Boscagli again formed a composed central pairing in the first half, another small tick in the box as the coaching staff piece together their defensive options for the competitive fixtures to come.

The more intriguing clues, though, came on that left flank. With Mitoma sidelined and Minteh out, this final friendly hinted that De Cuyper will be asked to offer something different from wide areas – less out-and-out wing play, more intelligent combinations and late arrivals.

Pre-season is not about points, but it is about answers. Albion left the Amex with another win, a clean sheet, and at least one solution to life without their star wingers. The real question now is whether this improvised wide threat holds up when the games stop being friendly.