If you listen to radio phone-ins, trawl message boards and look at fans' letters in newspaper sports pages, it would be easy to assume that all is not well at The Hawthorns.

They have picked up just a solitary point from their last five Premiership fixtures and consecutive victories for Portsmouth has slashed the gap.

With three tough road trips in their next four games and a home fixture against Liverpool on the horizon, the landscape doesn't look any easier for West Bromwich Albion.

To compound their problems, Diomansy Kamara, who has undoubtedly energised Albion's performances since his return from the African Cup of Nations, is already classed as a fitness doubt for next Monday's trip to Tottenham Hotspur with a ham-string strain.

Kevin Campbell should recover from a calf strain sustained against Manchester United, but manager Bryan Robson can ill-afford an injury crisis at this stage of proceedings.

Albion's assistant manager Nigel Pearson, however, is ignoring all the harbingers of doom.

The heat is rising every day, but Pearson is adopting a cool head and refuses to burden the playing staff still further with a constant stream of meetings.

While analysis is under-taken with the club's Amisco analyst Lee Darnbrough on a daily basis regarding their "I get the feeling outside of these four walls there is a negative air about this season. We can't afford to get sucked into that."

However, Pearson isn't blind to the fact that Albion are deeply entrenched in a relegation battle.

If they continue with their current run of results then relegation will surely become a reality, especially as Portsmouth are finally garnering the points their lavish outlay in January justified.

playing statistics, Albion's second in command confirms it is business as usual for the remaining seven weeks.

"We will have a meeting with the players only when we feel it is necessary," said Pearson.

"We have got to make sure that our approach is positive.

"There is no reason for us to not to be upbeat even though we lost against Manchester United.

"We are in a run of form, results-wise, that isn't positive, but the performances haven't been bad. We need everyone within the club to be focused on being positive.

Whereas Fulham's surprise victory over Chelsea on Sunday - only the fourth Premiership defeat endured by Jose Mourinho - drew collective groans from their relegation rivals, Pearson again centred on the positives.

"A lot of talk has been about our run-in and supporters look for games they assume you will pick points up from. We are exactly the same," said Pearson.

"Fulham's result against Chelsea illustrates there will be more twists and turns between now and the end of the season. I couldn't tell you how many points we need. It is impossible to predict how it is going to pan out.

"It has been individual lapses in either concentration or errors that have been costing us. That is a problem and I'm not going to deny it.

"But I am not into a 'blame' culture whereby the staff say 'we have done our bit.' It's not like that at all.

"We will continue to work as hard as we can to make sure we get enough points and rectify the situation.

"We are still confident these players can keep us up. I tend to look at it from a positive point of view. We haven't been getting the results we want but, at this moment in time, we are in a position where we are outside the bottom three.

"Before the end of the season we may find ourselves in a situation where we drop in there and have to come out again - you never know.

"If we hit anywhere near our maximum we will give most teams a bloody good game and hopefully get some decent results on the way."