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Alan Irvine unsure of a future at West Brom

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Under-pressure West Brom boss Alan Irvine admitted he cannot be confident of keeping his job after his side suffered another damaging defeat at the Hawthorns.The Baggies slumped to a 3-1 loss to Manchester City today after an abject first-half display left them 3-0 down inside 34 minutes.

And Irvine admitted he cannot predict the reaction of chairman Jeremy Peace after fans again booed his team on a grim Boxing Day afternoon.

“The chairman will make a decision as far as that is concerned and I can’t control it,” said Irvine.

“Can I be confident about it? No, not necessarily because I don’t know what the thinking is.

“All I can do is work as hard as I do and keep on trying to get the right kind of performances and results.

“Unfortunately in the last couple of games we have attacked well and defended poorly and that was perhaps not the case earlier in the season, when we defended well but didn’t attack so well.

“We are working hard to get the right balance.”

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Irvine’s side have suffered six defeats in eight games, leaving them just two points above the relegation zone.

And the head coach blamed individual errors for City’s goals.

Fernando opened the scoring after a howler by goalkeeper Ben Foster before more poor defending allowed Yaya Toure to make it 2-0 from the penalty spot and David Silva to add a third.

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“They are individual errors from players we wouldn’t expect to make individual errors.

“They are players who are reliable and it’s a surprise that any one of those players would make a mistake, let alone three that cost us.

“But they’re human and it happens to everybody at some time. I work extremely hard, I try to leave nothing to chance and I can’t do anything in terms of individual errors.

“That’s not something within my control. It sounds like I’m ducking responsibility and I’m certainly not, but I can’t be in control of some of the things that happened.

“What I can do is try to make sure that the team plays in a certain way. I challenged them to be strong mentally and have that toughness and courage to take the ball and not crumble.

“It’s easy to say it and to challenge them but they’ve got to go out and do that and, to be fair, they did.”

Midfielder Graham Dorrans (calf) could be available for Sunday’s trip to Stoke but striker Victor Anichebe (groin) will again be missing.