Alan Irvine looking to exploit Manchester City weaknesses

By Barney Corkhill, Editor | 24 December 2014

West Brom boss Alan Irvine believes that the Boxing Day visit of Manchester City is the perfect remedy for their recent defeat to QPR.

West Bromwich Albion manager Alan Irvine has expressed his belief that Friday's match against Manchester City will help his side overcome their recent defeat to Queens Park Rangers.

The Baggies will welcome the reigning champions to The Hawthorns on Boxing Day having blown a two-goal lead to eventually lose 3-2 against the R's at Loftus Road on Saturday.

Irvine admitted that he was still hurt by the defeat, but believes that a team of City's calibre are the perfect opponents to face as they look to "move on" from the loss.

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

"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."

West Brom currently sit 15th in the Premier League table, just two points clear of the relegation zone.