Alan Pardew: West Brom as good as anyone in the bottom half

Albion were soundly beaten 3-0 by runaway leaders Manchester City during a one-sided game and defeat leaves them rooted to the bottom of the table, four points from safety.

But Pardew is pleased with how the transfer window went, and reckons his squad has enough to drag itself clear of danger in a congested league.

"If you looked at us tonight you would say we were in big trouble," he said after the game. "But we were missing some big players, and they may make Saturday, certainly some of them will.

"I think we're as good as anyone up to 11th but we've got to play catch up.

"We've got to do some work, but in terms of a manager having assets on the bench and on the pitch I think we're ok."

One of those new assets is Daniel Sturridge, who made a 15-minute cameo towards the end of last night's match and missed a great chance when the score was 2-0.

Pardew was encouraged by his performance and may start him against Southampton on Saturday.

"We're so conscious with his injuries that we protect him so it's important he got some minutes," said Pardew. "He may be fit to start at the weekend.

"I thought he was unlucky with his chance, he was onto it quickly, he tried to chip the goalie and then nearly steered it in. He's a natural goalscorer."

One of the big talking points of the game was the ferocity of several challenges.

Fernandinho and Matt Phillips were lucky to escape red cards for reckless tackles on Grzegorz Krychowiak and Brahim Diaz respectively and the home crowd were incensed when James McClean tried to chop Kevin De Bruyne down in the build up to City's second goal.

It came after Pep Guardiola demanded his players were given more protection following a horror tackle on Leroy Sane in the FA Cup that left him sidelined for six weeks. But Pardew defended Phillips.

"He's a winger and in desperate situations wingers can make poor challenges," he said. "And it was a poor challenge.

"But I think Fernandinho made a similar challenge in the middle of the pitch. Grzegorz struggled after that incident, I haven't seen it, but he didn't think it was particularly great.

"Pep's comments affected the crowd I thought, they got on the referee's back."

Krychowiak was forced off in the 33rd minute clutching his thigh, and to add insult to injury, Fernandinho notched City's first goal.

De Bruyne added a second after half-time before Sergio Aguero wrapped up the points with two minutes to go.

But 3-0 flattered Albion, who would have lost by more were it not for Ben Foster.

"It was a tough night," admitted Pardew. " We had one or two players who was coming into the team without many Premier League games recently because of the injuries we had.

"Against that kind of quality they found it difiocult to be calm enough in transition and keep possession. We couldn't do that.

"We never really knocked the wind out of their sales and they just kept coming and coming, we really had to work hard, but I thought they were really good.

"I think it's 13 months since they lost here, Everton are the only team to get a draw here, it's a daunting prospect.

"It's very difficult how to set up against them, you could play five in midfield, five at the back.

"We hoped that we could cause them problems like we did Liverpool but we couldn't.

"After 20 minutes I put Jay (Rodriguez) on the side to try and shore us up.

"De Bruyne is probably the key to it, his passing and offensive play from deep and midfield and the high third is such high quality. You don't know what to do with him.

"At times in the game tonight I wanted to give my players a cuddle because I felt sorry for them.

"All of our players ran their hearts out. We were tired and some of our possession was tired but that was lack of game time from one or two, James McClean and Sam Field found it difficult.

"But it's a strange game football, we kept them at 1-0 for a long time and then at 2-0 we had a big chance, we might have made then nervous.

"That's what you need to do here to win, score at the right time."

When asked about Phillips's challenge, Guardiola said: "Today we were lucky, we could have been unlucky like what happened to Leroy (Sane) three or four days ago.

"I would repeat what I said three or four days ago (about protecting my players) but that's not necessary.

"It was one of our best performances of the season. We need to be more clinical in front of goal, but we created an amazing amount."