Pardew – We Dominated West Brom

A disappointed Alan Pardew has said as far as he was concerned we dominated West Bromwich Albion yesterday but we just couldn’t convert the chance to make that control count.

Pardew’s Albion Audio (click here)

Two goals early on in both halves gave the visitors and the returning Tony Pulis all three points come the full time whistle but having dominated chances and possession, Pardew was clearly annoyed as he spoke to Crystal Palace FC following the game.

Speaking about the early goal that came after only two minutes of the game the gaffer said he felt Pulis’ knowledge of the squad was a real asset for them.

‘That was a weakness in our set up that Tony exploited, it’s a feather in the cap for them that set-play. It was well-worked. Their guy took Jason Puncheon to the edge of the box where he is not comfortable marking there. It’s something we’ll have to look at going forward. It’s a good day for West Brom. We won’t go away from what we do, we try to pass it, try to find a way through, try to solve problems, get crosses into the box. In another game we get a goal back and it’s different ‘

Another disappointing thing with the loss is it’s the end of our winning run, but Pardew knows nobody should be too down as it’s football and these things happen so whilst disappointed and frustrated with the result, he knew there were an awful lot of positives to take from the game.

‘We are disappointed because our winning run comes to an end. We couldn’t have done any more. We dominated the game, we had great moments without getting on the end of it, I can’t fault the team, we just came up against a team who do very well when they get the lead.’

With a shorter than usual piece of coverage from the website that probably belies Pardew’s frustrations that he wanted it over with quickly, but I suspect we’ll get more as the days tick by now.

Somebody else giving their after match thoughts was Scott Dann who equally bemoaned their early goal because he knew it gave us a mountain to climb against a very good defensive unit – so we always knew the first goal would be key but unfortunately for us it fell for them.

‘We knew that we didn’t really want to concede the first goal against one of the ex-manager’s teams as you know that if they get the first goal it’s always going to be difficult. After that we threw everything at them and it didn’t fall for us, nothing went our way in the box and we pushed really hard to try and get that goal but we couldn’t get back into the game.’

Dann went on to say that made it very ‘difficult’ for us because they tightened up, got men behind the ball and didn’t leave a lot of space in useable areas of the pitch.

‘They made it difficult, there was no space anywhere on the pitch, especially in their own half, and we forced things a bit too much at times. We probably should have mixed up our play to try something a little bit different so we played into their hands but they defended well on the day.’

With Hull up next, Dann went on to say that the camp wouldn’t be down for too long as in many ways it was a typical bad day at the office, so they’ll stay confident and look to bounce back once more.

‘We’ve been on a great run, we’ve come into the game high on confidence and we felt we were going to get the three points today. We conceded the early goal which was a big setback for us and we couldn’t get back into the game but these things happen in the Premier League. We’ve got to pick ourselves up and move onto the next one, and take the confidence we gained from the last four wins into the last five games.’

Vital Crystal Palace on:

Vital Crystal Palace on: