Crystal Palace parallels provide hope for Sam Allardyce in West Brom plight

The survival specialist was appointed Baggies boss last month following the dismissal of Slaven Bilic.

But apart from an impressive draw at Liverpool, Albion have fallen to heavy defeats against Villa, Leeds and Arsenal in Allardyce’s other matches in charge.

Back in 2017, the Dudley-born chief defied the odds to keep Palace in the Premier League having previously done the same at Bolton and Sunderland.

But it took Allardyce six games before he registered his first win in charge of the Eagles, with the bosses January signings to key to their turn around.

And he is hoping he can achieve his first Premier League win Albion more quickly, with the Baggies facing Wolves and then West Ham following this weekend’s FA Cup tie against Blackpool.

“I don’t want to go six games without getting a win, that’s for sure,” Allardyce said when asked if he can see comparisons between his Palace side and Albion.

“At Palace we got towards the end of the window – we beat Bournemouth away.

“Then we played the next game at home and we’d completed all our signings but we lost 4-0 at home to Sunderland.

“From then on we hardly lost a game and we managed to stay in the league.

“The longer we go without winning a game, the more we’ll need to win from the games we have left – we don’t want to get to that stage.

“The only way we’ll do that is we stop goals from going in the back of our net.

“If we start with a point, we come off with a point. We must drill that into the players, because the sloppy goals we’re giving away aren’t helping

“I don’t mind if someone scores a wonder goal, but when we’re conceding so many sloppy goals, as we did against Leeds – we have to cut that out first.”

Allardyce is known to want to sign a number of players this month.

The priority is to improve the spine of Albion’s team with a defender, defensive midfielder and striker all on the list.

The Express & Star understands Leicester’s Hamza Choudhury is one of the players being targeted for the holding midfield role.

Albion are also interested in signing West Ham winger Robert Snodgrass in a bid to add more experience and leadership to the squad. And Allardyce said all additions will be made to ensure the team becomes more resilient.

“We’ve got to battle as a team,” he continued. “The first thing we have got to do is defend better.

“I’ve had a good look at everyone in the squad, we’ve tried our best in every game.

“Until we start getting clean sheets we’re not going to move up the table.

“We also don’t have any proven Premier League goalscorers in our squad.”