West Brom will not splurge in transfer window — Pardew

LONDON: West Bromwich Albion do not have the funds to spend big in the January transfer window but manager Alan Pardew hopes their slide into the Premier League’s bottom three will come as a wake-up call for the players at the club.

West Brom started the season with back-to-back wins but have since gone 16 league games without a win and are second from bottom, two points from safety.

Pardew, who replaced Tony Pulis last month, previously said West Brom were keen to strengthen their attack and were interested in Liverpool’s Danny Ings but now thinks they will take a more conservative approach.

“I think it’s fair to say we haven’t got a big pool of money to suddenly go out and buy ourselves a player for 20 million pounds (US$26.71 million),” he told reporters.

“But we’ve got money in the kitty to talk about a loan player if we think we need it, or a signing, if we think we need it, that’s not in that region of money.”

West Brom travel to 17th placed Stoke City later on Saturday and Pardew said the prospect of losing ground in the battle for survival should start the alarm bells going off.

“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,” Pardew added. “It gives a little bit of a reality check to everybody and I’ve encouraged the players this week not to hide from it... face the reality of it and let’s get out of it - and stay out of it.

“It’s important we get some distance from us and the bottom three. At the moment we’re at the first stage of it.” — Reuters