West Brom set for Peter Odemwingie reunion but grass isn't greener for the Cardiff striker

The Baggies have run into trouble with three successive defeats which have left them hovering dangerously close to the relegation zone.

Odemwingie's Cardiff City are one point and one place below but showing remarkably similar recent form. Malky Mackay's outfit have one win and six points from their last nine games; the Baggies show just one point more from the same sequence.

How's Odemwingie faring? Not much better. He's scored a couple of goals but the last of those was against Newcastle at their flakiest back in the first week of October and he hasn't found the target in his last eight appearances.

That has started to cost him his starting role. The 32-year-old hasn't made the first XI in the last three games for Mackay, a dangerous trend for the Nigerian international who has been openly talking about reclaiming a spot in his nation's squad in time for the World Cup finals.

All of this suggests that the undercurrent throughout the striker's contentious and controversial exit from the club was spot on – Odemwingie and Albion were both much stronger together than they ever will be apart.

The forward's 31 goals from 69 appearances make him Albion's most successful Premier League striker and, forgetting for a moment his petulant farewell to the club, you wonder how many Albion fans would find a place for him in the current team as it struggles to fire.

But if 2013 has been a dismal year for the Baggies, then the story of Odemwingie has been its despairing symbol. As much as head coach Steve Clarke always maintained the drawn-out saga did not de-stabilise his team, quite clearly it did – primarily because the half a dozen goals Odemwingie would have added over the second half of last season could have lifted his side and given Clarke more breathing space now that results are stacking up against him.

No, the Odemwingie Affair was a nightmare for all concerned. That ridiculous misadventure in the Loftus Road car park, aggravated by Twitter attacks on the club sullied his reputation for all time in the eyes of Baggies fans.

The disruption it brought to the dressing room was another unwelcome side-effect. Odemwingie became isolated and regarded as selfishly arrogant by the hard-nosed senior pros who rule the roost at the Baggies training ground. There were precious few tears spilled when he left for good.

The player himself recently suggested that he was now harbouring regrets about that.

"Of course I have regrets," he said. "There was a time when I couldn't escape it and I shouldn't have done what I did in January. I still get the jokes and the banter even now from other players, but slowly it goes away.

"But I was a very good player for West Brom. My son was born the night after I scored an equaliser for West Brom against Aston Villa in January. I always gave everything."

Odemwingie says that he is "so motivated to help Cardiff stay in the Premier League" but the move still looks like the transfer he had to settle for as opposed to the one he imagined.

And if he is serious about returning to his international team, 20 minutes off the Cardiff bench is not going to be of any use to him – and both Roy Hodgson and Clarke will vouch for how high-maintenance an unsettled Odemwingie can be when he is not in the team.

When Cardiff shelled out more than £2m for a striker whose powers can only be on the wane as he goes into his early 30s, they were hoping copper-bottomed Premier League goalscoring experience had been acquired.

But after a flat performance at Crystal Palace on Saturday, and a damaging 2-0 defeat, Mackay admits he is far from happy with his forwards.

"At this level it is not an easy position to fill. The search is always on to find players who can score goals," he conceded.