SAM Allardyce admitted today that he was in danger of turning his players paranoid in his quest for Premiership excellence.

The Wanderers boss is agonising over basic errors at set-pieces that have already cost a stack of points this season, and which led to an ignominious defeat at West Brom a fortnight ago.

He is determined to eradicate the problems, starting against Crystal Palace at the Reebok, but fears that dwelling too much on them could be counter-productive.

"If we hadn't conceded so many goals off corners, we'd be on 18 points, and in third place in the table," he said.

"It's one of the biggest things we work on, but my problem is that consistently talking about it and working on it, could get us paranoid.

"We have to eradicate it because it's a problem, but we also have to be careful how we do it."

The international break has done nothing to quell Allardyce's anger at his team's performance at The Hawthorns and he was in uncompromising mood yesterday when his players reported for their first training session since his hour-long post-match inquest.

"After those four games without losing -- against Birmingham, Arsenal, Manchester United and Liverpool -- we went to West Brom and capitulated and that was too much for me," he said.

"I won't stand any more of that nonsense."

The wheel has turned dramatically for Wanderers after their exhilarating start to the season. They go into the Palace game without a win in four attempts and anxious to get back into the rhythm that swept Charlton and Southampton aside before they took five bonus points from their victory over Liverpool and the draws against Manchester United and Arsenal.

Allardyce is making no great claims ahead of the Reebok clash but he is determined not to let his players get into the habit of losing -- even if they are not performing to their best.

"The trick is to get a result when you don't play well," he said. "We don't seem to have the desire, the knowledge or the understanding to make sure that, when we don't play well, we don't lose and we come away with something we don't deserve.

"We've had the reverse on many occasions, when we have played well and should have had more -- against Birmingham, for instance, and against Manchester United and even Arsenal, when I thought we deserved more than we actually got.

"Every team that finishes in the top half has games when they get something they don't deserve -- the top teams actually get wins -- and, however badly we played, we should have made sure we got the draw at West Brom."