Birmingham boss Garry Monk on the 'importance' of picking up points against Leeds United

The Blues have lost five league games on the bounce and during that difficult run have been hit with a nine-point deduction for breaching the EFL's profitability and sustainability rules.

Monk's side now sit five points above the relegation zone in 18th place after the penalty with seven games of the season to play.

The 40-year-old, though, says every game is of added importance with the difficult situation the Blues find themselves in at St Andrew's.

"It’s important in every single game to get points," Monk said, "but you can only try as hard as you can and give everything you’ve got.

"Those players have given everything they’ve got and shown quality and organisation against a very good side and we’ve been very unfortunate with a few things that have gone against us tonight (at West Brom) and we need things to go for us and hopefully we will get those in the next games.

"But we trust in ourselves. We’ve had adversity all season long and just because there’s a bit more adversity it won’t change our thinking."

Asked if it feels like everything is going against Birmingham this season, he replied: "Yes, it does feel like that.

"But the mentality the squad have had this season and the mentality we’ve tried to put into the squad this season is that adversity will come your way at some point at certain points.

"Sometimes it’s greater than other teams.

"We seem to have faced a lot of adversity this season, but our attitude has been to meet it head on and I think you can see from the performance in the last couple of games that we’ve been trying to show our best attitude possible and quality."