Club News

Irvine hoping Ideye can make big strides

And boss provides update on progress of Davidson and Gamboa

ALAN Irvine is hoping club-record signing Brown Ideye will be fit enough to play some part against Sunderland in Saturday’s Barclays Premier League opener (ko 3pm).

Yesterday’s final pre-season date with FC Porto came too soon for the Nigeria international, who only arrived at The Hawthorns on Friday after a long wait for his visa.

Meanwhile, Irvine also explained why the Baggies’ two latest recruits – Jason Davidson and Cristian Gamboa – played no part against the Portuguese outfit.

“It’s a case of fitness with Brown and Jason that meant they weren’t involved yesterday," he said.

“Cristian’s not even in the country yet so he definitely couldn’t have played!

“We’re trying to get Jason Davidson as much training as we can.

“He trained yesterday and will train again today.

“Brown Ideye is the same.

“We’re trying to gauge where he is in terms of his fitness.

“The situation at the moment is that he trained yesterday and he’ll train again today.

“We’ll talk on Monday where we think he is.

“If he’s ready to play some part against Sunderland that would be great.

“I know he trained extremely well yesterday and we need to see what the effect of that is.

“He didn’t do a lot of pre-season with Dynamo Kiev so we’re relying a lot on his natural fitness and athleticism, rather than something that has been worked on.”