Alan Pardew: West Brom need to start seeing games out

Albion have let in equalisers or winners in the last 16 minutes a staggering seven times this season, costing them 12 points in total. And the bad habit has continued into Pardew's reign.

The Baggies boss watched his team surrender another late goal at the weekend, when Wilfried Bony crashed home a winner for Swansea nine minutes from time.

He was disappointed with the performance at the Liberty Stadium because it didn't represent what he'd seen on the training pitch.

And he wants to see better game management from his new squad.

"There's an immediate problem of game understanding, how to get something out of a game, see it through," he said. "Our stats suggest that's a problem we need to address.

"There were some areas of the performance (against Swansea) I expected when I came in. Certainly there’s a resilience and a fight in the dressing room.

"It's just about getting confidence and quality on the pitch. We're missing some senior players which all managers will tell you is important but we can't lean on that.

"From the group that I have fit, we have to find a confidence to play the game.There were areas at Swansea where we got ourselves in a great position to exploit the game, and we've got to understand that. We'd earned that right but we didn't take it."

Pardew doesn't believe the issue is down to fitness, and he has the statistics to back that up. He is sure it is a confidence problem, and one that he can fix.

"Of course we get loads of data, you can’t imagine how much," he said. "One thing strikes me is that we're the seventh strongest running team in last 30 minutes – that suggests to me it's not fitness, it's concentration and confidence and sometimes late goals putting us on edge.

"We are a little bit like that, so we need to see a game through. Until we do that we'll always have that against us.

"For me it’s just about understanding how going to win a game – how is that win going to come.

"Is it going to be a defensive display and you beat a team on a set play or transition, or be pretty even and squeeze through, or dominate possession and create lots chances like we did second half against Palace.

"Every game we have to try to see the game plan through and not come away from it individually.

"So far two games, we have tried to see the gameplan through, which has been really encouraging for me. We’ll wait and see."

After conceding one goal from his opening two games and scoring none, Pardew is understandably more content with the defensive side of things than the attacking side.

"In two games I’ve had as manager, I can only think of one small moment really when defensively we made an error," he said.

"Defensively we've been really sound, and I've been really pleased with that, albeit not against top opposition to be honest.

"You can't put Crystal Palace and Swansea in the same category as Liverpool and Manchester Utd.

"We have defended very well, but we've got the threaten the goal more and that's where the task becomes a little bit harder in the next two games."