Alan Pardew Believes He Can Keep West Brom Up After 0-0 Draw With Crystal Palace

Newly appointed West Brom boss Alan Pardew saw enough during his side's 0-0 draw with Crystal Palace to believe they can avoid relegation.

It was the battle of the former managers at the Hawthorns on Saturday, as Pardew faced the club that sacked him last year and Palace manager Roy Hodgson returned to the club he left in 2012.

As quoted by the Express and Star, Pardew said in his post-match press conference: "I was encouraged because I'm still missing five or six who you could argue might be starters, certainly three or four. If that's the quality of the group I have then we'll be fine.

"I thought we had some really good performances today and the application in the first two days and the game today I couldn't fault. It's just disappointing we couldn't send our fans home today with a win."

The game was incredibly open, but slowed down in the last half hour as both struggling teams appeared to have a fear of losing and wouldn't take a risk.

Pardew was impressed with how his side began, adding: "We started as I would have liked. We tried to unhinge them at the start and knock them out of their stride. Then we just let them off at set plays, our set plays weren't quite right. 

"And then unfortunately we lost our way in the first half, 15 minutes before half-time was concerning really. We looked like we lost confidence in what we were doing.

"We managed to get them in at half time, realign them a little bit and then second half was really good, I was really pleased."

The new Baggies boss picked out individual performances he was particularly impressed by.

"Sam (Field) on the left hand side did great for us, Jay (Rodriguez) looked more efficient with Salomon (Rondon) and the back four with Claudio (Yacob) were great in terms of our transition and momentum in the game."

West Brom travel to fellow strugglers Swansea next Saturday for another vital game in the relegation scrap.