Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty ImagesRoman Lukaku and an injury-plagued West Brom could not get the job done against QPR.

It's hard to decide what to make of yesterday's game. West Brom didn't deserve to lose the game; Rob Green making a series of excellent saves, but arguably they didn't do enough to say they deserved to win. It was a performance that was very disjointed; it was lethargic and lacked any real urgency up until the QPR goal.

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As a performance, it was probably worse than the one seen at Reading on Saturday where Albion were very good for 82 minutes of the game only to see eight minutes of madness cost them in the end. There was a fair outpouring of frustration and anger after the game -- me being one of them -- and I was angry because the cup is the only chance a club like West Brom is going to have to taste success. Albion are never going to win the league, finishing seventh is probably akin to that in the modern day for clubs outside of the big guns. So to see a performance lacking any real spark was incredibly frustrating.

Having said that, the injury crisis West Brom have found themselves facing has really not helped matters, particularly as it has happened over the busiest time of the season.

It is showing what West Brom are; a side with a first XI capable of mixing it with most other teams in the Premier League, but ultimately a team, like many others, that lacks the financial resources to create an excellent squad to go with the excellent first XI. It is not just the lack of depth; it is in which positions the injuries have happened and to who.

The spine of the West Brom team that had such a successful start to the season was Ben Foster, Jonas Olsson, Claudio Yacob and Shane Long. All four of these players have missed chunks of action, with the latter three missing a majority of the Christmas/New Year period. Then you add to the equation key players like Youssuff Mulumbu and Peter Odemwingie missing a chunk of action, along with Steven Reid and Goran Popov, it's fairly evident that this is starting to catch up with Albion.

By Saturday, they could be up to nearly full strength with Yacob and Long rated 50/50 for the game with Aston Villa, the only definite absentees being Mulumbu(African Cup of Nations) and Zoltan Gera, who is out for the rest of the season -- again another first team player who has been missing. Clarke will be hoping that these injuries will finally ease up and the Baggies can get their season back on track.

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