West Brom legend makes Black Country Derby prediction

The Northern Irishman, now the loans manager at Albion after hanging up his boots in 2021, believes it is important head coach Carlos Corberan treats the tie as close to a normal fixture as possible.

“It’s a difficult one as a player or staff, Carlos will be very meticulous with how he plans this game and set-up against Wolves, but as a player you’ve just got to play it as a normal game, as daft as that sounds,” said Brunt, who spent 13 years a Baggie, making 421 appearances.

“You really do, you have to set other things aside, the more emotionally involved you get, the more likely you are to get carried away, sometimes the occasion does get the better of teams but the team that plays the occasion better will probably come out with a positive result.”

Brunt added: “I don’t think the manager will treat it any differently to a normal league game, he looks at the opposition, the staff are all very good with technology and computer clips, they will have every angle covered.

“They played Monday and maybe that extra couple of days’ rest will play into our hands, but you just never know when it comes to the cup, they might make a couple of changes, you’re not sure what Premier League clubs are going to do, but for us it’s a massive opportunity to get one over your local rivals and I’m sure the manager will be prepared, especially with our home form. Wolves will be very wary of that.”

Brunt netted an early opener in the 2-0 victory before Peter Odemwingie made the win safe late on. The former Sheffield Wednesday man remembers his celebrations in front of a sea of old gold in the Smethwick End.

Brunt is hopeful Albion’s current crop can deal with a step up in atmosphere and occasion at Sunday lunchtime.

He said: “It is a challenge but the manager’s been great at that, over the last couple of months we’ve had big crowds, over Christmas especially, a few times last year attendances were down a little bit, but this year it’s not as if we’re going from 18,000 to 27,000 – we’ve had good crowds and atmospheres over the Christmas period.

“The team has responded to it really well, too, which hopefully is the case again on Sunday.

“I don’t think you can have different methods, the only time I remember doing anything different is when we played Villa in the league on a Tuesday night and then in the cup on Saturday – Tony Pulis was in charge and he went OTT with hotels and when and where we trained.

“We ended up losing both games! Me personally, I don’t think it needs to be changed because of who you’re playing.”