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Premier League: Alan Irvine hopes West Brom can show some mettle against Man City

Alan Irvine celebrates at the end of the English Premier League football match between Tottenham Hotspur and West Brom
Image: Alan Irvine: West Brom boss is looking for a reaction

West Brom manager Alan Irvine is hoping the Boxing Day visit of Manchester City will give his team a chance to put the disappointment of last weekend behind them.

Albion lost 3-2 away to Queens Park Rangers on Saturday, surrendering a two-goal advantage, and Irvine is adamant his team deserved much more from the game.

But Irvine is relishing the scrap with second-placed City, and he believes they are ideal opponents as West Brom look to bounce back.

"I'm still desperately disappointed about the QPR result and I need this game to move on completely," Irvine said.

"Overall it was a really good performance last weekend. We deserved to win the game and to come away with nothing at all was extremely galling.

"We have to learn from what went wrong but also build on the positives, because there were plenty of them."

Looking ahead to tackling City, he added: "It's a really good game for us. It's fantastic to have them coming because obviously they're a really top team.

"A lot was being made of the fact they didn't have any strikers for the game against Crystal Palace and they won 3-0, so it just goes to show the quality of the players they've got.

"They've got a squad full of players who showed that if you can pass and move and have great awareness and positional sense then you can create chances and score goals.

"It's normal to look for any weaknesses we can find and obviously a team like them do not have many. But hopefully there are a few we can exploit.

“And obviously we'll look at their strengths and see what we can do to counteract them.”

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