Despite making it through to the last 16 of the competition for the first time since 2006, the Magpies’ form has stuttered of late, with a run of just one win in ten games in the Premier League leaving Bruce’s side nervously looking over their shoulders once more.
Opponents West Brom, meanwhile, currently look a decent bet to secure one of the Championship’s two automatic promotion slots, though their title aspirations took a hit with a surprise 1-0 defeat to lowly Wigan Athletic on Saturday.
With his side having already made hard work of despatching Rochdale and Oxford United en route to the Fifth Round, Bruce is anticipating another testing encounter at the Hawthorns. But, should they come through it, the boost he feels it would provide – both on and off the pitch – would be a significant one.
“We understand we’ve had a difficult run – there’s no denying that – but we’ve still given ourselves a wonderful opportunity,” he said. “We’ve got to 32 points with ten games to spare. If somebody had told me back in August that was going to be the case, I’d have said ‘thank you very much – I’ll take that’. Of course we need to go and win a couple of games, and we’ve got some big games coming up. We’ve got five of those at home, where our form has been very good – we’ve got 21 points at home. So it’s all to play for. Everyone’s looking over their shoulder a little bit, of course, but that’s the nature of the Premier League.
“Since I walked through the door, (I’ve said that) the FA Cup is the FA Cup. We’ve got to the Fifth Round for the first time in years, and it’s going to be a big challenge. There’s a big parity with ’74, so I’ve been told, where we went to West Brom (in the Fifth Round) and won 3-0. I always believe a cup run can give everybody a lift. The fans have responded like I knew they would; they want to see their team trying to get to a quarter-final. We all know that the Premier League is vitally important to us, but a cup run gives everybody a lift.
“(West Brom) are a very good side – they’ve got some very, very good players. I thought two or three weeks ago they were going to run away with it, but make no mistake, they’ve got a very decent side. They haven’t been out of the Premier League long, and they’ve still got a lot of Premier League players, so it’ll be a tough tie. But it’s one we’re looking forward to.”
Having gone with five at the back for almost the entirety of the campaign beforehand, Bruce changed tack for Saturday’s Premier League clash with Burnley and shifted to a 4-3-3 formation, moving No. 9 Joelinton across to the left and re-introducing Dwight Gayle up front.
Though the Magpies were unable to find a way past the Clarets in the end, Bruce was encouraged by much of what he saw, and hinted that the same system may again be in operation come Tuesday night.
“We tried something different, and I was pleased with lots of it,” he said. “We certainly created far more opportunities and had more attempts on goal, which was the aim of the whole exercise. Obviously I was disappointed we didn’t manage to take one. But as I’ve said over the last four, five or six months, our Achilles heel is that we haven’t been able to score enough; we’ll just have to keep working on it.
“We can try and have a look at it again. A lot of teams change their system but it doesn’t get mentioned as much as it does with us. I’ve seen two, three or four Premier League teams change formation every other game – it happens, especially the big ones who have the ability to adapt very quickly. We’ve tried something different, because I genuinely think we have to have more opportunities on goal; Saturday was better – we’re disappointed we didn’t take one, and that little bit of quality in the top third is what we have to improve on.
“I think they were comfortable. Look, they’re professional football players; we’re not asking them to go to the Moon. We’re just asking them to do something slightly different. We kept a clean sheet, so we didn’t suffer defensively, so it’s given me food for thought.”
