Newcastle United pundit shares 'outdated' view after Steve Bruce's winless West Brom start

Former Newcastle midfielder and pundit Darren Ambrose has been alarmed by the lack of ‘bounce’ that Steve Bruce has been able to conjure up at West Brom in the early days of his tenure.

Albion have lost six of their last seven league games, form which has left them staring a mid-table finish in the face after months of aspiring for promotion and an immediate return to the top flight.

Four of those six defeats have come on Bruce’s watch. He was tasked with reinvigorating Albion’s season, which was beginning to falter under Valerien Ismael, but in the short time that he’s been at the club, the scale of the challenge on his hands has been hammered home.

Since, Albion have tumbled out of play-off contention and spiralled into the bottom half of the table, having registered a point and a goal since the end of January.

Ambrose, who was once of this patch when he spent a short while playing for Birmingham City, acknowledged Bruce’s unquestionably experienced and decorated CV at this level, but he is concerned that he’s been so far unable to spark the Baggies back into life and has questioned whether he is still feeling the effects of the end of his Newcastle tenure.

“Your tactics of throwing your best XI out there and hoping for the win don’t work anymore,” Ambrose told talkSPORT. “We’ve seen the decline with Steve Bruce in management.

“It’s not just at Newcastle, it’s prior to that. He’s won a few promotions, of course, and you don’t manage 1000 games and not have some kind of awareness, but I think it’s a little bit outdated.

“I don’t know Steve Bruce. I’m led to believe he’s a real nice guy, and I’m sure he is, but when we’re talking about management he wasn’t good enough at Newcastle.

“For him to come in and