Steve Bruce reveals West Brom ‘nervousness’ as Baggies suffer Preston defeat
West Brom extended their winless run to eight matches on Wednesday evening with a 1-0 defeat against Preston in the Championship.
The Baggies now find themselves as low as 22nd in the table after just one win in their first 12 league fixtures.
Yet again West Brom conceded early against Preston, with Emil Riis Jakobsen scoring the only goal of the game just seven minutes into the match.
Steve Bruce insists he talked all week with his players about starting games better, and claimed he sensed “nervousness” in his players.
Speaking to West Brom’s official website, Bruce said: “I didn’t think we deserved the defeat.
“Again, the talking point will be the fact we’ve conceded very, very early and given ourselves a mountain to climb.
“It’s all we’ve spoken about for the last week, not conceding early goals. We have to be able to give ourselves a chance.
“There seemed a nervousness to us, even though I swapped half of the team. Unfortunately, we’ve made the same mistakes as we seem to have done plenty of times this season.”
Time to go
Preston has to be the last straw for Bruce. Ryan Lowe’s side had scored just three goals heading into Wednesday night, yet took just seven minutes to break down this Baggies defence.
West Brom are slumping further and further down the table, and any time afforded to Bruce is just making the job harder for his inevitable replacement later this season.
The board need to act quickly and make a change at the top, otherwise things will only get worse with Bruce.
While he’s definitely been let down by the finishing of his players in some games, his defensive organisation is simply not good enough and the confidence of his players has seemingly hit rock bottom.
No other club in the division would put up with these results and remain patient. While there’s still time to recover the season – West Brom need to act.
Finding a replacement will obviously be high on the priority list and Roy Keane is one name mooted with the job after he was spotted in the stands at Deepdale (Birmingham Live).
But frankly, anything and anyone will do for Baggies fans, who are just desperate to see change take place at the Hawthorns this week.
In other West Brom news, the Baggies must sack Steve Bruce now, and Guochuan Lai needs to intervene if Ron Gourlay doesn’t do it