Alan Pardew played three strikers to send a message to West Brom's players and fans

The 56-year-old picked an attacking line-up for his first game in charge, playing Salomon Rondon, Hal Robson-Kanu and Jay Rodriguez up front together.

Albion started brightly but tailed off towards the end of the end of the first half and Pardew switched to a two-man strike force at half-time to match Crystal Palace.

The game finished goalless, but the Baggies spent most of the afternoon on the front foot and had 20 shots in total.

And Pardew started with three strikers to prove that Albion will be positive under him in the wake of Tony Pulis's pragmatic approach.

"I wanted to send a message not just to the fans here but to the players," he said. "We can play with three strikers and we can be positive and go for teams.

"Sometimes when you play with three strikers, it doesn’t always work, but if we’d got a goal in the first 20 minutes, we might have kicked on from there. We didn’t, so we’ll reflect on that."

Pardew was encouraged by what he saw at The Hawthorns and reckons the team will be 'fine' this season, especially when key creative players like Matt Phillips, Nacer Chadli, and James Morrison return.

And the new boss doesn't think it will take his squad long to adapt to his adventurous style of football.

“They are an experienced enough group to grasp what I want quickly," he said. "They need belief. This (performance) will give them belief in what we did."

Albion remain in 17th, one place above the bottom three, and haven't won any of their last 14 games in all competitions, but Pardew is confident the club won't go down.

"I wouldn’t come if I didn’t think the team was good enough to stay in the division," he said. "Of course we’ve got to prove it.

"On Saturday we showed signs, and with a lot of big players missing that was really encouraging.

"It would’ve been lovely to get the three points. We’ve got to keep fighting for that first win, because I think that’s going to be important to us that it comes sooner rather than later."

Gareth Barry was forced off after 30 minutes on Saturday and the veteran midfielder will have a scan on his groin injury on Monday.

But Pardew hopes Chris Brunt (thigh) and Matt Phillips (hamstring) will be available for next weekend's trip to Swansea.