Alan Pardew admits it has been tough to motivate West Brom players
Alan Pardew has admitted it has been tough to motivate his Albion players after so many consecutive defeats.
The basement Baggies lost their ninth game in a row in all competitions on Saturday, pushing them closer to their inevitable relegation.
Pardew has found it difficult to drag his team back from so many defeats but he still believes he and assistant John Carver have the experience to deal with the situation.
Some of Albion's players appeared to be simply going through the motions during Saturday's 2-1 defeat to Burnley, particularly in the first half, and when Pardew was asked it was difficult to motivate them, he agreed.
But he disputed the notion that they weren't trying.
"It's tough," he said. "We're very experienced as you know, myself and John Carver, and we've been in pressure situations before, most notably at Newcastle where the pressure is enormous.
"You can sometimes sense in the team that they are suffering from that. We could definitely sense that in the first half.
"Anybody who is a football person would see that that team was not not trying, they were just nervous and under massive pressure.
"I have sympathy with them a little bit but there's also part of me saying come on then, you've got to be stronger than that."
Fans in Halford's Lane claim that Carver told one supporter to 'shut your gob' during the match as frustrations from the stands boiled over during a flat first-half played at pedestrian pace.
"I didn't notice it if I'm honest," said Pardew. "The fans are frustrated, we're frustrated, we're not going to get engaged in a situation where we're upsetting fans.
"We're trying to say 'stay with us', and it's very difficult in this situation. I don't want to add anymore to that."
Although the official attendance was 23,455, there were swathes of empty blue seats at The Hawthorns and it looked like closer to 18,000 actually turned up.
When Pardew was asked if he was worried about apathy setting into the fanbase, he said: "That's evident of where we are and society to a degree as well.
"It's happened at Arsenal many times, they say 50,000, I've been there when it was 20,000. So at least our percentage was more than that."
