Steve Bruce unhappy with ‘unacceptable’ West Brom performance at Birmingham

West Brom manager Steve Bruce labelled his side’s performance as unacceptable after they fell to a 1-0 defeat to rivals Birmingham at St Andrew’s.

Lyle Taylor’s fourth goal since arriving at the club was the difference in the 67th minute after Conor Townsend was penalised for handball.

Albion failed to register a shot on target all game and now face a large task of reaching the play-offs with an eight-point gap between themselves and Blackburn.

Bruce, who has only won two of his 10 games in charge, expressed his frustrations on the defeat for his side.

“It’s got to be the worse game of football I’ve seen in a long time,” Bruce admitted.

“We didn’t possess any real quality in the top end of the pitch. We had some moments but it lacked quality on both sides.

“After being here for seven weeks, we go up and down. The reason why we’re in the middle of the pack in the Championship is because of that.

“We can play really well against Fulham and that’s my biggest disappointment, it’s not acceptable. For a team that should be, or supposed to be, at the top end, we go up and down far too often.”

Albion were denied a spot-kick early on when Marc Roberts seemed to handle the ball, but nothing was given before Birmingham won one themselves.

Despite admitting that Blues’ penalty was the right decision, Bruce was not hesitant on venting his frustration on the earlier decision.

“It’s a stonewall penalty,” he continued. “I think the referee has blown his whistle and then invented a free-kick for them when none of our players went for the ball.

“Conor’s got his hand in a position where he shouldn’t so I’ve got no qualms about that one, but we should have had a blatant penalty after three minutes.”

Speaking after steering Birmingham to