Disappointing end to the season as West Brom lose to Stoke - match analysis

This has been the first campaign since the club's last Premier League relegation in 2009 in which Albion have gone backwards and the last rites passed their own comment on such a troubled 10 months or so.

There was to be no uplifting valediction, no rousing statement of support for Pepe Mel and his troubled tenure.

Stoke City took care of that as they so often seem to do. A very different Stoke City – thankfully – but a very familiar feeling as Albion's second-half improvement was consigned to insignificance by a winning goal drilled home by Charlie Adam three minutes from the end.

Even that moment was cloaked in bitter irony for the Baggies. Remember that Adam challenge on Youssouf Mulumbu at the Britannia missed by referee Howard Webb which denied the Baggies a match-winning penalty?

Webb later apologised to Steve Clarke but it was one of a sequence of seemingly cruel moments in the first third of the campaign which certainly played a role in the up-rooting of the former head coach as the season drifted into torpor.

• West Brom 1 Stoke City 2 - match report and pictures

It is a drift Mel has been unable to address and change. Despite defeat, Albion still stayed up by three points because Norwich failed to beat Arsenal – but the sense of this team surviving as much by the failures of others as their own merits was complete.

Even the weakest Villa team of the Premier League era, given a final-day dressing down by Tottenham, still managed to win the private "best in the West Midlands" duel. Albion's squad boasts far more pure talent and experience than their nearest rivals and has had to work extremely hard to under-perform them.

And a dispiriting air followed them even as the last man made his way down the tunnel after a lap of appreciation followed the player awards on the pitch long after the final whistle. Albion had to wait for the taunting visiting fans to exit before conducting the formalities by which time less than a couple of thousand fans remained to share the moment.

It all carried the whiff of embarrassment and came with one final dash of controversy as Stephane Sessegnon and Youssouf Mulumbu were spotted declining the customary tour and heading straight down the tunnel.

Ah well. It has been that kind of season for the club and there won't be anyone sorry to see the back of it.

As is so often the case, the final match of the campaign brings to the surface so many agendas, especially on a day when the appearance of Peter Odemwingie in the opposition's colours brought a reminder of the happier times before his agitated exit from the club.

"We should have left you in Russia," the Smethwick End sang to him – with feeling – not too long after a moving minute's ovation for another lost hero, Clive "Chippy" Clark, reminded The Hawthorns of the very different values of a very different era.

There was even a little cuffing for owner Jeremy Peace over the club's refusal to allow the Astle family supporters the opportunity to distribute inside the stadium leaflets supporting the "Justice for Jeff" campaign. They must have had a 100 per cent take-up outside, however, because when the ninth minute arrived, the home sections were complete in making the symbolic gesture.

With so many troubling side-issues enveloping the club – and we won't get started on the row brewing over next season's kit design – what Albion needed more than anything was a rousing send off from the team. What they got was a reminder of their deficiencies this season.

More often than not since the Spaniard took over, Albion have been unable to produce more than half a performance, a frustration which followed them to the very last. For the opening half-hour especially, there were yet again unable to rouse themselves from the kind of lethargy that marked the previous performance at Sunderland.

An own goal by Gareth McAuley – inadvertently converting a cross from Marko Arnautovic after Stoke had picked Albion's defensive cover bare – was no more than Stoke deserved.

Stoke were toying and teasing Albion with what used to be their own game and the half-hour mark passed with the home fans turning their anger from Odemwingie to their own players in frustration. Rightly so – a packed house was expecting more than a limp repeat of their Stadium of Light offering.

But, curiously, the discredited Nigerian came to their rescue one final time, albeit briefly. A clattering with McAuley as the two men chased down possession on the touchline spilled some much-needed vim and vigour into Albion's performance and back in to the galleries; united by their mutual adversary, the team finally put some meaning into their football.

Before the break, they threatened with the kind of quality on which not enough has been seen from a group of players packed with the ability to produce much more – Graham Dorrans, James Morrison and Chris Brunt linking for an opportunity which just eluded Sessegnon.

But it was a tempo they immediately picked up again after the interval. Sessegnon's equaliser in the 57th minute was a peach, the forward continuing the late season rally of form by moving on to Craig Dawson's cross after Dorrans had found both space and the perfect pass.

Dawson, the latest to try to fill Albion's vexing difficulties at full-back, had a testing afternoon against the gifted Arnautovic and so it was enjoyable for him to gallop forward again and set up the same Albion colleague for a header which stretched Thomas Sorensen.

Mulumbu then smashed a drive of such force against the upright that the the ball ricocheted out to the other side of the pitch while the first of Mel's substitutes, Victor Anichebe, nearly captured the lead with a rising shot that had the beating of Sorensen but also the bar.

But just as The Hawthorns prepared for one final assault, Stoke broke out to claim the winner via one of their own replacements. Adam had taken over from a jeered and derided Odemwingie and smacked home a left-foot drive from 20 yards which Foster could not reach.

Yet again, there was another outbreak of the kind of mini Mel-mania which has gripped the club since the head coach's arrival despite a record which now reads three wins from 17 games and a closing chapter of three successive defeats.

As he made his way around the pitch during the lap of thanks, the handshakes and requests for 'selfies' engulfed him.

It was one more slightly bemusing, slight confusing, comment on a calendar year which has gone horribly wrong for Albion.

His team did little for his case yesterday to suggest he can put it right.