REALITY CHECK AT BAGGIES

ALAN PARDEW is not complaining about his West

Brom side falling in to the drop zone and said it is a welcome “reality check”.

The struggling Baggies axed Tony Pulis when they were a point above the bottom three. And successor Pardew (above) has two points from four games ahead of today’s trip to Stoke.

Albion have not won in 17 games since August to slide to 19th spot, but boss

Pardew said: “It’s a strange thing to say but going in the bottom three, when you’ve been hovering around it, is not such a bad thing.

“It gives a reality check to everybody and I’ve encouraged the players this week not to hide from it.

“It’s not like we have tried to bury our heads in the sand, but we are facing the reality of it and let’s get out of it – and stay out of it. It’s important that we get some distance from us and the bottom three. At the moment we’re at the first stage of it.

“You look at the bottom 10 teams and they are all reachable for us, but when you go four months without a victory suddenly you think, ‘Well how is this logical?’.

“But I’ve seen enough in the games I’ve been at, and on the pitch, plus players returning from injury, that I think we can do that. I’m not being unrealistic.”

Albion’s biggest problem has been their lack of goals, with just 13 this term.

They have scored only once under Pardew and he said it has been challenging to change from a rigid defensive set-up under Pulis into a more open style.

He added: “We have to threaten the goal a bit more. We have only scored 13 goals and we are almost halfway.

“That is not good enough to stay in the division so something has to change.

“We have to change our philosophy a little bit, we have to change our mentality.

“And more importantly we have to get ourselves a win to break this sequence we are on to give everyone some confidence.

“You try to put a personality into a team and it needs to be backed up by results. The next win is very important for us.”