Bruce: It'll go down to the wire
Steve Bruce has admitted Birmingham are facing a last-ditch battle to stay in the Premiership after their “horrible” results in the first half of the season.
Blues have taken only 12 points from their opening 16 games and are four points adrift of the safety zone as they prepare to face Tottenham, Manchester United and Chelsea in their next three league games.
Bruce told PA Sport: “In the position we find ourselves in at the present time, this situation is going to go down to the last game of the season.
“Our current return of just 12 points is a horrible return. We have now got to get something like 26-27 points out of 21 games. That is the target and I am convinced we can do it.
“We’ve got a massive period coming up and what is vitally important is that we keep ourselves in touch and remain in the race for Premiership survival.
“We’ve got a fight on our hands because of the terrible start we have had and there are five or six of us in there. We hope someone else is dragged into it. We need to keep picking up a few results.”
Central defender Martin Taylor said: “We don’t want to be cut adrift. We want to be out of the relegation zone. Just before last Christmas we had four wins on the trot and we pulled ourselves up past mid-table.
“The fixtures mean it is going to be very difficult to do that again but you never know. We have done well in the past away to Chelsea. We definitely will go into these games in a positive frame of mind.
“We have to. As soon as we start thinking negatively, then it becomes a much harder task.”
