Birmingham City manager Lee Bowyer has admitted the international break came at the right time for him and his side after a poor run of form, revealing this to the club's media team ahead of tonight's clash against West Bromwich Albion.

The Blues went into the interval having won just one point from a possible 15 in their last five games, scoring once, conceding 12 times and dropping down 12 places to 16th - a heavily detrimental spell that has effectively cancelled out their early-season progress.

After sitting just two points off the top of the table after six games, they are now just four above the drop zone after 11 matches and face a huge test against West Brom, who have the chance to go top of the table this evening with a win.

Admitting the Baggies' side is even stronger than it was when they were in the Premier League, Lee Bowyer is fully aware of the magnitude of this task against a talented manager in Valerien Ismael, and the visitors will need to be on their A-game if they have any chance of winning a point or three from the upcoming tie at The Hawthorns.

Barring their 6-0 defeat against Arsenal in the Carabao Cup in August, West Brom remain unbeaten at home this season, but away wins at Sheffield United and Luton Town will give Bowyer's men hope that they can get something out of this one against all odds.

The international break has also been hugely beneficial for the Blues according to Bowyer, as he said: "That came at a good time for us, the last one not so much because we were in a good place. But after the last few games, I think we needed that break to fix some problems that we had.

"I have known for a little while what the problems were, but it was just having the time to fix them. When you are playing Saturday-Tuesday, you don't have any time on the training pitch to go through certain things that you need to.

"This break has definitely given us time to tweak a few things and put them right."

The Verdict:

International breaks are the ultimate double-edged sword. They come at the wrong time when you're doing well, but at the right time if you're performing poorly.

For the Blues, a break from the Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday schedule was clearly needed to allow Bowyer to shake things up and get more of his ideas across ahead of the next set of fixtures.

They were only going one way before the interval - and that was even further down the table. With this run, their promise in the early stages of the season has helped to bail them out up until this point, but their form simply has to improve.

Their forward area could be the key to this improvement, with Troy Deeney and Tahith Chong potentially providing an exciting mix of youth and experience to fire the West Midlands side up the Championship table.

The former is yet to get up to speed, but once he starts firing, the Blues could be a real force in the second tier this term. You feel it's almost a case of when, and not if Deeney gets into form after being so reliable for Watford over the years.