Alan Pardew: West Brom can't afford 'lovely gestures' like Salomon Rondon's in the FA Cup
Baggies boss Alan Pardew has told his players to be more ruthless after revealing Salomon Rondon tried to wrestle a penalty off Jay Rodriguez to give Hal Robson-Kanu confidence.
Rodriguez, who scored a spot-kick against Arsenal on New Year's Eve, was supposed to be taking penalties last weekend when Albion visited League Two Exeter City in the FA Cup.
But when the Baggies were awarded one, Rondon tried to wrestle the ball off him.
It initially looked like the Venezuelan was keen to take it himself, but Pardew has revealed Albion's No.9 wanted to give Robson-Kanu the penalty in order to breed confidence in his team-mate.
Rondon and Rodriguez had already scored, whereas the Wales international had not, but his penalty was saved.
Pardew described it as a 'lovely gesture' but has this week warned his players there is no place for sentiment on the football pitch.
"We have had a chat," he said. "I'm going to be totally honest, sometimes managers are not honest about these matters. Jay was supposed to take that penalty.
"Salomon thought it would be a good idea for the confidence of the team if Hal took it and scored, because Salomon and Jay had already scored.
"And that was actually a lovely gesture by him, not the gesture I wanted him to make by the way.
"But I can understand why he did it where we are, and in the context of the game, we were 2-0 up.
"Of course we missed it and Exeter hit the post two minutes later, it gives you an example of when we do things we need to do things right.
"We can't afford to have sentiment on the pitch, as much as it was a good sentiment."
Despite the missed penalty, Albion comfortably saw the game out 2-0 to end their club-record winless streak in all competitions.
But Pardew wants it to kick-start an upturn in fortunes in the Premier League.
"There was no celebration or cheering in the dressing room," he said. "It was a little bit of relief I thought.
"I thought that was the right reaction. Now we need to back it up with a win in the Premier League.
"Momentum is a strange thing. I can see on the training ground this week a little bit of pressure has been released.
"We need to bring that to our performance and put our game plan on the pitch and attack it with venom."
