Keith Downing fell to his first defeat in five matches as caretaker boss as West Bromwich Albion crashed out of the FA Cup.

Goals from Dwight Gayle and Marouane Chamakh booked Crystal Palace’s place in the fourth round and maintained their improvement under new boss Tony Pulis.

The manager who guided Stoke to the FA Cup final in 2011 has now won four games out of nine in charge of the Premier League strugglers.

Victory at The Hawthorns never looked in doubt after Gayle had fired the visitors ahead against an Albion side showing eight changes to the one chosen against Newcastle in the Premier League on New Year’s Day.

The striker capitalised on a glaring error from Goran Popov, whose hacked clearance fell straight to Hiram Boateng. The 17-year-old midfielder found Gayle and he wrong-footed Ben Foster with a left-footed strike from the edge of the area.

It was Gayle’s fourth goal in eight starts since his Palace record £6million summer switch from Peterborough and strengthened his claims for a regular place in Pulis’s side.

Gayle was one of five changes from Palace’s side against Norwich on New Year’s Day. Substitute Chamakh scored the second with the last kick of the game deep into added time, firing into an empty net.

Palace’s Barry Bannan and Albion’s Craig Dawson each hit the woodwork in an evenly matched first half. Palace keeper Julian Speroni turned in a man-of-the-match performance after the break to deny Albion.

Downing said: ‘It is hard to take. We gave them a goal, which is disappointing.When you play against Tony Pulis’s sides, you know they’ll be organised and resolute. Once we gave the goal away it made it doubly difficult for the afternoon. ‘We had a lot of possession and it was frustrating.’

‘At half-time we talked about a lack of intensity to our game, we were a bit disappointing without the ball, we didn’t get after people.

‘We’d been positive in the last four games and I just felt there was too much caution here, waiting for things to happen. ‘We grabbed the game to a certain extent in the second half but with just not enough creativity in the final third.

Asked whether that was down to the lack of atmosphere, Downing replied “No, I don’t think that’s a reason or excuse. ‘We have to generate our own atmosphere, momentum and pressure. ‘I don’t think we did enough of that, particularly in the first half.’

—Daily Mail