Former West Brom Premier League manager beaten by player power lands new job at La Liga strugglers

Former West Brom manager Pepe Mel has landed himself a new job just a month from his last one.

The 61-year-old has been installed as the new boss of Almeria, who are currently struggling in La Liga. He takes over a side that are rock bottom of the division having failed to win a game, and are currently 14 points adrift of safety.

He replaces Gaizka Garitano who took over from Vicente Moreno, but between them they failed to win a game. Mel returns to football management just a month after leaving his job in Greece.

Before accepting the post at Almeria, Mel was manager of OFI Crete who play in the top-flight of Greek football, but having only won once in 12 matches, he left the club by mutual agreement. He will now be tasked with taking on a job that is to be on a hiding to nothing.

West Brom fans though will be reminded of how they very nearly dropped out of the Premier League when he took over in 2014. He took over from Steve Clarke in January 2014, when the club were 14th. The Madrid-born manager oversaw 17 games, but won just three times, but stayed up by three points.

Ben Foster, who spent seven years as a player at The Hawthorn's opened up on his time under Pepe Mel. He played under various different managers in the 223 games he played, but revealed that he and the players protested against the Spaniard's plans to overhaul the playing style.

Opening up on his time under Mel, former Man United and England goalkeeper said: "The gist of it was 'I want you to start playing out from the back'. Me (Ben Foster) in goal, Craig Dawson at right-back, Gareth McAuley, Jonas Olsson and Liam Ridgewell, that's the back four.

We ain't trying to play out from the back! That ain't even a thing! Straight away on the training pitch it's 'let's start with a goal kick'. Ridgewell, Dawson stretch the pitch out. The other team has to press us, try and stop us from doing it. We couldn't get out.

"We still had the same assistant manager Keith Downing. We had to go to the manager and we had to go to Keith and say this isn't working. We can no do this anymore. At this point we have to say, right Keith, you are going to have to revert to doing it the way we know best. So he would basically jump and be a joint manager with Pepe Mel. Pepe Mel would be the face of it, Keith Downing would take the training session and instruct everything.

"We ended up winning a load of games, managed to stave off relegation. That is one of the only times where I've seen it where we've had to actually go 'we're not going to play that style of football.'

It was initially reported that Mel had signed an 18-month contract with the Baggies but he departed the club that summer and was replaced by Alan Irvine. As for Mel, he went on to manage Real Betis, Deportivo La Coruna, Las Palmas and Malaga.