Alan Pardew is doing his utmost to put on a brave face but the last-chance saloon he spoke of after this galling late defeat by Bournemouth has already been and gone. West Brom have been resigned to it for a while but an eighth successive defeat was further shattering evidence that the club will be playing Championship football in August. After failing to see out what would have been a rare win Pardew’s men are 10 points from safety with seven games remaining.
A tendency for West Brom to undo their hard work has blighted them all season and did so again here as Ben Foster was caught cold by Jordon Ibe’s swerving effort on a biting afternoon on the south coast before Junior Stanislas’s postage-stamp free-kick sealed victory two minutes from time.
In reality squandering leads is only a small slice of a fairly miserable story. The manner of this defeat, after a spirited if unspectacular performance, left the Albion manager deflated.
“I am under contract here for another three years and we have got to keep fighting,” said Pardew, who denied there is a release clause in his contract in the event of relegation. “I keep saying it to my players: we have got to keep showing pride in what you do, and I will keep doing that until such time I am told not to.”
Pardew’s men have dropped 24 points from winning positions – more than any other team in the division – and sustained that miserable trend after Bournemouth rallied to ensure Jay Rodriguez’s opener, coming after smart work by Salomón Rondón, was worth nothing. Asked if his team have left themselves with too much to do, Pardew said: “If you look at our record since the start of the year, you would have to say yes but, of course, we have to keep battling on. It’s getting near last-chance saloon so we needed to get something today.”
A comical first half punctuated by a couple of half-hearted penalty claims passed without any real incident but four minutes into the second half Rodriguez smashed home from close range. Bournemouth looked as though they were going to be punished for a lax display until they sprung into life when Ibe’s devious effort from distance eluded Foster down to his left. That goal set up a grandstand finale. When Craig Dawson felled Joshua King 25 yards from goal, Stanislas stepped up to sink Albion with a peach of a free-kick.
An exasperated shake of the head by Pardew as Charlie Daniels, the Bournemouth defender, hacked off the line from the substitute Matt Phillips with seconds left said it all. For Bournemouth, who now fly to Dubai for a warm-weather training camp, this victory makes a fourth successive season in the top flight look ever more likely. “We had to dig very deep and it was the hardest way [to win] but I’ll take any way at this stage of the season,” said Eddie Howe.
