West Bromwich Albion manager caretaker manager Nigel Pearson says he "may have no future with the club" despite taking charge of the club's biggest win in five years.

After overseeing the 5-1 demolition of Ipswich Town at Portman Road, the right-hand man of former manager Bryan Robson knows that he is likely to go the same way as his old boss when new manager Tony Mowbray takes charge on Wednesday morning.

"I'll be speaking to Tony Mowbray," Pearson said, "but things change in football. I've played my part this year and now we must see what happens. But I may have no future with the club."

After seeing the side Robson built clock up their first away win in nine months in astonishingly breathtaking style, Pearson still has two days' work guaranteed - preparing his team for tomorrow night's match against Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park, where he will again be in charge in front of the watching Mowbray.

The newly-appointed but not publicly-paraded Mowbray left Hibernian in the hands of No 2 Mark Venus for the 2-2 draw in yesterday's Edinburgh derby with Hearts.

Now the former Wolverhampton Wanderers defender is expected to report with Mowbray on Wednesday morning - to prepare for Sunday's Black Country derby with Wolves, Venus's old club.

The pair will start work in the wake of embittered comments north of the border that Mowbray could have done better for himself than Albion. But Mowbray and Venus have received support from a former Albion favourite, skipper Derek McInnes, now with Millwall after his spell in Scotland with Dundee United, who said: "West Brom are a far bigger club than Hibs and will offer Tony much more opportunities.

"I still keep in touch with people at West Brom and, when I first heard about the possibility of Tony moving there, I thought it would be a good move for everybody, apart from Hibs, of course. Hibs are a big club in their own right but West Brom are geared for the Premiership.

"Look at the squad, the training ground and the stadium. I thought they'd go up anyway this season but Bryan Robson obviously didn't see eye-to-eye with the club and he moved on. But Tony will definitely still take them up. They've a good squad of players, mostly the same team that won a few Premiership games last season and were unlucky to go down. But they've added proven goalscorers to their squad and I think they'll go up."

Mowbray, explaining his decision to join Albion after turned down his old club Ipswich in the summer, said: "I just felt I was ready for the next challenge. I always think it's important that the fit is right when a manager joins a new club. And I'd like to think this fit is right. The club are ambitious and so am I.

"At Ipswich, I coached under George Burley and Joe Royle knowing I wanted to become a manager. And I'm very grateful to Hibs for giving me that opportunity. I had two-and-a-half enjoyable years up there and I'd like to think it was a relatively successful time considering the way we got the club moving. But when the chance arose to speak to West Brom, it was an opportunity I could not turn down."

>> Mowbray's challenge - click here