Blues' were forced into a change for one of those reasons that doesn't normally crop up too often. We're used to so-and-so being out suspended, and so-and-so having a thigh strain. Jermaine Pennant had been imprisoned in the 8 days between games though, and so Salif Diao stepped in to the heart of the midfield, with Damien Johnson moving to the right flank. This selection proved to be a very costly error. Stan Lazaridis returned from injury to sit on the bench.
As is sometimes the case, this report will take the form of a rant, so if you want details of who did what in what minute, then you'll have to buy the Evening Mail.
From the first minute Blues were woeful - utterly dreadful. Diao had an absolutely shocking game, and his appalling reading of the game and dismal passing meant that Albion got a grip of the game very early on. Meanwhile, the only guy with a bit of bite in the Blues team, in Johnson, was stuck on the right flank watching the heart of the midfield crumble. Even at Palace, Johnson and Stephen Clemence were Blues' best performers in the middle of the park - an area they'd bossed against Liverpool and Southampton. Here though, Johnson's aggression was taken out of that, and Diao's incompetence was put in. The result was that Blues were on a hiding to nothing.
The obvious thing to have done - albeit with hindsight - was to leave Clemence and Johnson in the middle, where they've been doing ok lately. In particular, here you were up against a side who were going to work hard, but have no quality whatsoever, so the Clemence/Johnson pairing seemed ideal, with either Darren Anderton or Robbie Blake wide right. If you insist on playing Johnson wide right, why bring in Diao who hasn't played for 6 weeks, when everyone has seen that Mehdi Nafti looks a pretty decent all-round central midfielder.
Anyway, like I say, all this is with hindsight. Blues performed appallingly, with Diao and Julian Gray, who looked less than uninterested epitomising the performance. At the end of the game, the only two players who emerged with anything like credit were Jamie Clapham - who was actually excellent in a variety of positions - and Johnson, who was his normal self.
Blues were so lucky to get to half-time at 0-0 - being booed off by the visiting support - that you thought that Bryan Robson would probably tell his players to keep up their performance, and that Steve Bruce would lay into his team. Hopefully this would have meant Blues stepping up a gear and winning. It actually got worse though - severely worse.
The main thorn in Blues' side was Geoff Horsfield. Just as an ex-Blues striker had been the key to beating them last week, the same happened this week. Horsfield bullied Kenny Cunningham and Matthew Upson to the point that it got embarrassing. The Blues centre halves have never, ever looked so poor. Horsfield was excellent, but didn't do anything that Bruce, Cunningham or Upson would have been surprised by - they just got bullied out of the game.
Up front Emile Heskey and Walter Pandiani both looked poor, but that's because the service they received was awful. Heskey may be 6'3", but it doesn't correspond to the fact that you HAVE to hit long balls at his head. He's not bad at all on the floor, and at least then he can have more control of the ball. Pandiani too must have wondered what was going on. All game the front two were at loggerheads with their teammates behind them, and you genuinely couldn't blame them.
Whilst Blues weren't helped by a first half injury to Olivier Tebily that meant that Johnson now had to play right-back with Lazaridis coming on to the left-hand side and the utterly useless Gray switching to the right. They even threw on Blake and Anderton for Gray and Diao, and played Lazaridis and Johnson as full-backs with Clemence, Anderton and Clapham in the middle, and the frustrated front two joined by Blake up front. Even then though, Blues were shocking.
It's hard to put into words just how bad Blues were - hence the appalling structure of what I'm writing, as other things come into my head about the performance. When Blues beat Albion 4-0 at St Andrews earlier in the season, I wrote that Albion's performance was the worst I had ever seen from a team in the top flight. I have to say that this Blues performance rivalled that.
So many players under-performed, from first whistle to last. One moment at the end of the game summed up the Blues performance in my mind. Albion were taking short corners to run the clock down, and each time they did it, two Blues players sprinted over to try and win the ball back. Those two players were Clapham and Johnson. The other 9 were just not in this game. They lost first balls, second balls, tackles and headers. Losing is acceptable. Rolling over to the bottom side of the Premier League isn't.
West Brom: Hoult, Albrechtsen, Gaardsoe, Clement, Robinson, Gera, Wallwork, Richardson (Scimeca 90), Greening, Campbell, Horsfield (Kanu 86). Subs Not Used: Moore, Chaplow, Earnshaw.
Booked: Wallwork.
Goals: Clement 53, Campbell 64.
Blues: Maik Taylor, Tebily (Lazaridis 37), Cunningham, Upson, Clapham, Johnson, Diao (Anderton 68), Clemence, Gray (Blake 68), Pandiani, Heskey. Subs Not Used: Vaesen, Morrison.
Booked: Diao.
Attendance: 25,749.
Ref: S Dunn (Gloucestershire).