Alan Pardew blames VAR delay for hamstring injuries to Kieran Gibbs and Hal Robson-Kanu

Kieran Gibbs and Hal Robson-Kanu were both forced off soon after a lengthy stoppage in tonight's 3-2 victory over Liverpool in the FA Cup when referee Craig Pawson awarded a penalty to the hosts.

It came moments after Pawson had disallowed a Craig Dawson goal for offside following another lengthy stoppage for VAR.

It was a chaotic and sometimes farcical first half, which Pardew labelled 'mysterious', and the Baggies boss reckons it has left his players injured.

"It's hard to know where to start," said Pardew. "You guys are all experienced reporters, you were all here, I don't think that's what you want to see going forward.

"If you're a Liverpool fan or a West Brom fan, firstly there's no communication from the referee to us like in the NFL when they give you a call 'ok we're going to go to VAR'.

"'Is it a foul? We're going to look at that.' We didn't know what the decision was, why it was being stopped.

"They reversed the (Craig) Dawson goal which I think if it wasn't for the system would never have been disallowed in any league game for offside.

"The fourth official told me it was offside, that was a surprise, from a corner. Ok, I've looked at it, it's really marginal.

" There's a question there, are we going to start taking goals away from the entertainment of the game on those slight margins, that's a worry.

"The second one, you could argue Jake has lifted his arm, would Salah have got it (the ball), would he have got it (the penalty) in a normal game without VAR? I don't know.

"The bigger worry for me is I think it was four or five minutes, the Salah decision.

"You're going from high tempo work rate to nothing. We had a hamstring just after that.

"Now as a coach, we have to change, we're going to get our players to mentally do a warm-up in that situation or tick themselves over.

"You could argue it's a lack of professionalism by us, but I don't know."

Albion won the game 3-2 but had the ball in Liverpool's net five times in total, and four times in the first half alone.

"Our fans started singing 'It should have been four,' so you've got that now," said Pardew. "I don't know if they've seen it on social media or what but do you really want the fans to get it third hand or do you actually want them to know in the stadium.

"I haven't got the answers but as a football man on the sidelines I wasn't comfortable in that first half, it was kind of mysterious at times."

The majority of the post-match debates will be focused on VAR following it's extensive use in the first half, but Pardew does not mind it overshadowing his team's fantastic performance.

"That's ok," he said. "When you come somewhere like this and play well you accept that it's a bigger club, and people will talk about the failings of Liverpool and obviously the VAR, I've got no problem with that.

"We'll take confidence from the win, we'll look back on the tape and take the good stuff that we did going forward.

"We'll take that to Manchester City on Wednesday which is another daunting game for us.

"Hopefully it gives us confidence to be fearless in our play, which we have been.

"We were very unlucky to get a late winner against us at West Ham but we've been very good and positive without actually getting the three or four goals and tonight we looked like getting three or four goals and that's a really good sign.

"It was a real professional positive performance from us. We played without fear, which you have to do here.

"I set them up that way because after the Swansea result I thought Jurgen would go very strong tonight. It was important we didn't sit deep or sit back against them and that we carried a threat.

"Jay (Rodriguez) and Hal (Robson-Kanu) in that first period did it better than I could have imagined, Jay was terrific I thought."