Whilst both West Midlands teams have more intense battles and rivalries with other clubs, there is more than enough needle here to make this an interesting match.

There is also a team in poor form hosting a team with excellent form, both fascinating sub-plots to this 90 minutes of football.

Check out these Football Match Stats, including West Brom v Birmingham, ahead of kick-off.

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📈 West Brom v Birmingham Form & Stats

West Brom looked to be in position to make it back-to-back wins when they took a surprise 2-0 lead at league leaders Coventry, but a sending off and a Coventry comeback meant that defeat was their fourth in six matches and leaves them firmly ensconced in the bottom half of the table. Despite that, the first half of that match had some Coventry fans describing West Brom as the best team that they had seen at the CBS this season, so there are real swings and roundabouts to the Baggies at the moment.

Looking at them from a statistical perspective, they sit down near the bottom of midtable for most attacking metrics, including 21st for big chances created, which is obviously something that they need to improve on, but they remain in seventh for expected goals against. This sums up how I see Baggies at the moment. There is a lot of good there, but they are lacking balance in attack.

Birmingham have had a bit of a valley of a season. Starting high, dipping down low, but then emerging from that up and out of the other side even stronger. In fairness, performance metrics have been fairly steady throughout, but there has been an increase in something, whether that is belief, cohesion, or good fortune, that has seen Birmingham rise back up the table quickly and with goals aplenty.

Blues sit ninth in the table with 24 points, but they are third in the expected points table. This is because they are fourth for expected goals for, and third for big chances created, whilst actually being ranked the best team in the Championship for expected goals against, conceding only 13.9 xG across 16 matches.

📔 West Brom v Birmingham Formation & Team News

West Brom are using a fairly straightforward 4-2-3-1 shape in most matches. A slight tweak over the last couple of weeks has seen Mikey Johnston moved out to the right instead of the left, the idea being that Johnston is able to service Aune Heggebo and Isaac Price in the middle, instead of cutting inside and crowding that space for himself. This worked brilliantly against Coventry and demonstrated that if Heggebo is given service, then he has excellent movement and good finishing.

Jayson Molumby picked up two yellow cards against Coventry and misses this one. Ousmane Diakite is the likely replacement in central midfield. There are no other changes expected for Ryan Mason.

Birmingham also use a 4-2-3-1 system, and Chris Davies is really getting the system to tick in recent weeks. The move to take Tomoki Iwata out of midfield and into a marauding right back role, allowing Tommy Doyle and Marc Leonard to control the game and progress the ball, has been a real game changer for Blues, and this structure is likely to continue for the foreseeable.

There are no obvious changes to the Birmingham team that I can foresee here. Changes were made when comfortable in the last match to keep players fresh for this.

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