Tony Pulis hails hard-working West Brom players

Albion are now without a win in nine games in all competitions, but showed some promising signs against the unbeaten league leaders at The Hawthorns.

Three goals in five frenetic first-half minutes left City 2-1 up before Raheem Sterling seemed to have put the game to bed shortly after the hour mark.

A late Matt Phillips goal that capitalised on a Nicolas Otamendi mistake made things interesting for the final few minutes but City deservedly saw out the game.

But it was a better performance from Albion than recent weeks, and when Pulis was asked if he could take heart from the game he said: "Yeah. They're a good side.

"What City have got, they've got players who can take you out of the game in one-on-one situations and they've got players who can take you out of the game with passes.

"They're a real quality side and every teams that plays against them will recognise that they're going to get chances.

"We played a little bit differently with a swivelling set up at the back because they outnumber you through the pitch.

"At times it worked well but you need the breaks. When you get opportunities you need to take them. We had two really good chances, Salomon's and Grzegorz's.

"Having said that, they created their own chances and Ben (Foster) was very good in goal.

"But I can't fault the players, they were fantastic today, they worked so hard as a group."

Pulis was never going to be judged on today's result, and despite the disillusion among the fanbase there were only a handful of supporters who vocalised their anger at the match.

Despite the poor form, Albion's head coach remains confident that results will soon turn.

"The situation is we need to get a result, we want a result," he said. "We want to get our best team out there and get the balance right, I think we still haven't done that.

"When we do and get them alltogether we'll be fine."