West Brom’s promotion hopes have been dealt a huge blow with a number of first-team players unable to take part in their fixture against Sunderland on Sunday.
Striker Daryl Dike suffered an Achilles injury during the Baggies’ 2-1 win over Stoke at the weekend and had to be stretchered off. The 22-year-old is now set to spend a number of months on the sidelines as he begins his recovery.
So far this season, Dike had scored seven goals in his 23 appearances in the second division, 14 of which were in the staring 11, and will be a big miss to West Brom in the final stages of the season. Between Sunday and next Saturday, West Brom have three huge fixtures all against promotion rivals – Sunderland, Norwich and Sheffield United - and will be forced to go into all three with a number of severe injuries ruling out key players.
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Members of the squad who have been categorically ruled out of facing Tony Mowbray’s side include Matt Phillips, Grady Diangana, Dara O’Shea and Adam Reach who will all remain out for the rest of this campaign.
Elsewhere, both Okay Yokuslu and Kyle Bartley are facing a late fitness test for this weekend’s game at the Hawthorns. Head coach Carlos Corberan remains hopeful that the duo will be available, but with three games to be played across six days, the Spaniard may not want to risk reinjuring his players early on.
"Unfortunately I cannot give you the answer," Corberan said when asked about Yokuslu. "I would like to say yes, or no, but I don't know yet. We need to wait the next two days to see how he arrives in training. Now there aren't too many weeks to wait, hopefully we recover him for the next week because we have three games in a week.
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"It means that we are going to need players to cover the needs of these types of games. Let's see how he reacts to this."
Like the Black Cats, West Brom are still fighting for a spot in the play-offs and currently hold sixth place, although Blackburn are just below them on goal difference with a game in hand. Sunday’s early kick-off will be a huge fixture in the race for top six and one that both sides will be desperate to win.
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