Albion 1 Bologna 0: Hinshelwood's Goal Secures Victory
Albion went into their final pre-season outing without two of their headline wide men – and walked away with another win and a few new answers.
Jack Hinshelwood’s tidy finish on 59 minutes settled a 1-0 victory over Bologna at the Amex, capping a second-half spell when Albion finally ripped the game open down the flanks after a flat, predictable opening.
For 45 minutes, the pattern barely changed. Albion had the ball, shuffled it from side to side, but rarely pierced Bologna’s compact shape. The crowd watched, patient rather than expectant.
Then the wide areas came alive.
Rutter roams, Hinshelwood pounces
The shift started with Georginio Rutter. Nominally a No.9, operating more like a roaming false nine, he dragged defenders into awkward places. At one point he hugged the left touchline, wrestled to keep possession, then drove infield and drew a foul as Bologna’s back line finally lost their bearings.
From that move, the ball was worked across goal. Rutter’s low delivery was dummied by Diego Gomez and rolled on, seemingly about to fizzle out. No one in blue and white had read it – until Mats Wieffer arrived on the edge of the box.
Wieffer didn’t lash at it. He slid a low effort towards goal, the sort of measured strike that looked as much like a pass as a shot. Hinshelwood had timed his run, darted in, and turned it home while glancing towards the assistant’s flag.
It stayed down. Albion had the breakthrough their first-half possession never truly threatened.
That goal marked the change in tempo. Where Albion had previously been in front of Bologna, they were now behind them, slipping runners into the spaces outside the full-backs, Ferdi Kadioglu and Gomez repeatedly finding room to attack.
Flanks finally bite
The pressure kept coming from those wide channels. Wieffer, increasingly influential, threaded a clever pass to send Gomez racing in behind. His cut-back picked out Hinshelwood again, this time on the penalty spot, but the midfielder leaned back and blazed over.
Gomez remained busy. When he pulled wide and squared for Kadioglu, the full-back-turned-winger drove his effort against the post, inches from doubling the lead.
All of this came with the backdrop of a growing injury list out wide. Yakuba Minteh has joined Kaoru Mitoma on the sidelines, forcing Albion to rethink how they stretch teams. On this evidence, the answers may be less about orthodox wingers and more about intelligent rotations and full-backs stepping high.
Maxim De Cuyper, starting on the left in tandem with Kadioglu, offered an early glimpse of that plan. He had Albion’s first two efforts of the afternoon, both saved by Lukasz Skorupski, and repeatedly linked neatly in advanced areas.
The Belgian also slipped a smart pass into Kadioglu, who burst into a dangerous pocket before the move broke down. Hinshelwood, too, tested Skorupski with a volley after a measured cross from Olivier Boscagli, but the pattern of the first half was clear: tidy, controlled, lacking bite.
That changed straight after the restart as both sides opened up. Space appeared, tackles loosened, and suddenly the game resembled a genuine contest rather than a training exercise.
New faces out wide, old assurance at the back
As the substitutions rolled, Albion introduced more natural wide options in Ibrahim Osman and Zadok Yohanna. Both immediately carried the ball with purpose, running at defenders and injecting some edge into the final third. It was not just fresh legs; it was a different profile of threat.
At the other end, Bart Verbruggen quietly underlined his status. He made one sharp save in each half from Nicolo Carbiaghi, reading the angles well and preserving another clean sheet to close out pre-season.
In front of him, the options are stacking up. Luka Vuskovic and Boscagli again formed a composed pairing in the first half, dealing with what Bologna offered and stepping into midfield when needed. The structure looked solid, the understanding growing.
But it was the left side that offered the clearest hint of what might come next. De Cuyper, used high and aggressively, appears set to provide something different on that flank – less touchline chalk, more underlaps, late arrivals and disguised passes into runners like Kadioglu and Gomez.
Albion ended pre-season with a narrow win, another clean sheet and a new way of attacking without two of their most explosive wingers. With Tromso next, the question is no longer whether they can cope without them, but how far this reshaped left side can push their game when the real stuff starts.
