The killer habit of losing points from winning positions returned with a vengeance today after we somehow conspired to lose to a ten man Baggies side that were there for the taking. Once again, it’s the same old story of failing to capitalise on opportunities at one end and then being punished by momentary lapses of concentration at the back.

It started off in encouraging fashion when Abdoulaye Meite bizarrely turned Stewart Downing’s cross into his own net inside the first five minutes. Although the home side showed plenty of signs of danger, forcing a couple of decent saves from Brad Friedel, we weren’t bad value for the one goal lead at the break. It could have been more actually.

The second half picked up where the first left off, but then the first turning point came in the 51st minute when Richard Dunne was unable to continue after appearing to pick up a knock in a challenge from Peter Odemwingie just a minute or so earlier.

Ciaran Clark replaced Dunne, the apparent M.O. as he’s a left footer, leaving Carlos Cuellar watching from the bench as the youngster struggled to pick up the pace of the game.

It was unfortunate, but Clark gave away the free kick that would lead to the equaliser after a clumsy tackle on Odemwingie as he looked to turn and run into the left channel.

James Morrison lofted the dead ball to the far post, Jonas Olsson headed back across goal unchallenged and then the ball got bogged down for a moment in a familiar failure to clear lines before falling to Odemwingie to thump into the roof of the net.

Inevitable.

It briefly looked like the initiative would swing to the home side, but it swung back again just a minute later when Paul Scharner took down Stiliyan Petrov in full flight (you read that correctly) and was rightly shown a second yellow card, reducing West Brom to ten men.

Consigned to hanging on for a point, the home side dropped extremely deep and it looked like surely a matter of time before a second goal would be carved out of somewhere.

I’m not sure how you’d rationalise it, but McAllister elected to withdraw Nigel Reo-Coker, who had been typically combative in the middle, and brought on Robert Pires in his place for the final 22 minutes. Perhaps he thought the extra man would be usefully employed with some extra creativity in the middle, I don’t know, but it didn’t deliver the right result.

West Brom sat back to squeeze out all the space in the final third and were happy to let Villa dominate possession in front of them. The prospect of being punished on the break remained very real and that’s exactly what happened inside the final ten minutes of normal time.

A simple clearance by Carson under pressure from Darren Bent was sent up the touchline where Simon Cox not only beat Collins to the ball, but then scampered off directly at Clark, leaving the Welshman picking himself up.

Cox poked a neat ball through for the diagonal run of Youssuf Mulumbu being tracked by Luke Young. Mulumba threw out the anchor, turned a pirouette and shaped to shoot as Friedel came off his line to close the angle.

Unfortunately, Clark’s desperate attempt to provide a cover tackle actually rebounded the ball off Mulumbu’s shin, sending the ball over Friedel, into an empty goal and the home fans into absolute raptures at the prospect of beating us for the first time since 1985.

Marc Albrighton – initially not included in the 18 man squad, but was later named in place of Barry Bannan on the bench – came on for the last five minutes, but there never looked like any chance of anything being salvaged at the death.

When Ashley Young stood over an injury time free kick 30 or so yard out, the outcome was all too predictable. The resultant shot, sent into row Z summed up his game and our season perfectly.

Five minutes of extra time played and Phil Dowd finally put us all out of our misery. Another game thrown away; I believe it’s a staggering 26 points now discarded this season from winning positions. We remain stuck on 41 points with three games left to play; Wigan, Arsenal and Liverpool.

Wigan managed to grab themselves a point today against Everton. The game at Villa Park next Saturday has just had a whole lot more pressure added to it than it should have done.

Utterly bewildering.