Alan Pardew: West Brom players are still behind me

There have been question marks over the head coach's standing among his players following an incident in Spain when four senior members of his squad stayed out six hours beyond his 12am curfew and allegedly stole a taxi.

The Baggies fell to their fourth defeat in a row today when they were dumped out of the FA Cup by Saints, but they nearly came back from 2-0 down to take the South Coast side to a replay.

After Wesley Hoedt's 11th minute opener and Dusan Tadic's 56th minute chip, Salomon Rondon scored a screamer in the 58th minute before Ahmed Hegazi hit the bar late on.

Watch Matt Wilson dissect Albion's loss to Southampton

And Pardew, who left Jonny Evans and Gareth Barry in the starting line-up despite their involvement in the late night incident, was asked if his team were still backing him.

"Absolutely," he responded. "I think the second half proved that.

"It was difficult to go 2-0 down in the circumstances we're under and I think anybody who was here today will see that was a proper fight and a proper effort.

"In the first half I thought we looked a little bit edgy and Southampton did well in that period.

“In the second half we were a lot better and showed a lot more confidence, and a lot more guile and energy."

Barry and Evans kept their place in the team, although the Northern Irishman was stripped of the captaincy and shunted to left-back.

Barry put in a poor performance and was booed when he was hooked in the second half, but Evans was impressive.

Although there is an internal investigation into the incident in Barcelona ongoing, Pardew said he kept the pair in the side to let them make amends to the fans they had let down.

"It's difficult for managers," he said. "Obviously I was furious with what happened but at the same time I've got to stay faithful to the players and give them a chance to remedy the situation.

"Gareth Barry was ok today but I thought Jonny was very good actually in the circumstances.

"Jake (Livermore) is injured, he was in the dressing room today but he wasn't involved. Obviously the other player was the second goalie."

With left-back Kieran Gibbs missing through illness, Pardew decided to play Evans but stripped him of the captaincy to make a point.

Gareth McAuley was handed the armband instead, but Pardew has not yet decided whether he will keep it beyond this week.

"There was a problem in terms of selection because of the incident," he said. "I decided to go with my strongest team.

"But I felt I needed to make a little bit of a statement about the events.

"I was far from happy over them and make Gareth captain today. I’ll have to have a look at that this week and see how we go."

When Pardew was asked if Albion's flat first-half performance was down to the events in mid-week, when some of the players were out until 6am, he said: "I don’t know.

"Southampton are good at manoeuvring the ball and restricting you from pressure, that’s the one thing they are good at. The kept it away from us and made it difficult for us.

“I thought we were a little nervous in terms of taking the game to them. But I thought as the game went on we got better.

"We were so unlucky go two down in one of our best periods, they broke up the other end and got a second goal.

"But that still didn’t defeat our objective in terms of our mentality."

There were only 17,600 fans in The Hawthorns for the game, and even though there were boos at full-time, the atmosphere during the game was supportive.

“I thought our fans were terrific today," said Pardew. "The way they stayed with us, and I want to thank them publicly for doing that."