Club News

Clarke hopeful on trio

Baggies boss provides injury update ahead of Newcastle clash

STEVE Clarke today delivered a positive team news bulletin ahead of Sunday’s trip to Newcastle (ko 3pm) - after several injured players showed signs of improvement in training this week.

Chris Brunt (hamstring) returned to the practice pitch this morning while Jerome Thomas (knee), who is yet to feature for the Baggies this season, has trained for the last ten days.

Claudio Yacob is also expected to be fit to face the Magpies after missing training earlier in the week with a hamstring problem he picked up in Saturday’s 2-1 defeat by Manchester City.

And Steven Reid, who is rehabilitating from a knee injury, continues to make good progress - but the Baggies boss is reluctant to set a time-frame on his comeback.

“Reidy’s in a much better place this week than he was last week,” said Clarke.

“His hamstring injury has taken a little bit longer to repair than we thought.

“This week has been much more positive for him and he’s improving a lot.

“I wouldn’t like to say how long it will be before he’s fit because a couple of weeks ago we thought we were getting to a similar situation and he didn’t make the progress we thought he would, so I’ll sit on the fence on that one.

“At various points this week we’ve had some people in training and some people out of training.

“Tomorrow, when we head up north, we’ll be close to full strength.

“Yacob’s okay. He’s done a little bit of work this week.

"We’ll see how he is in training tomorrow and we’ll take it from there.

“He had a little hamstring niggle and he felt it during the game last week. We left him on because he’s an important player for us.

“Brunty joined in training today and it’s the first time we’ve seen him for a few weeks.

“He looked sharp. Thomas has also trained well for the last ten days.”