Jed Wallace & Matt Phillips: West Bromwich Albion set to be without pair for 'few weeks'
- Published
Neither Jed Wallace (left) nor Matt Phillips are expected to figure this side of Christmas
Promotion-chasing West Bromwich Albion expect to be without captain Jed Wallace, defender Kyle Bartley and winger Matt Phillips for "a few weeks".
And they still are no nearer giving any comeback date for £7m striker Daryl Dike, who is realistically now expected not to figure until the new year.
Wallace missed Saturday's 2-1 home defeat by Championship leaders Leicester City with a shoulder injury.
Phillips, the club's longest serving outfield player, has a hamstring issue.
He went off in first-half injury time on Saturday, while Bartley missed the game altogether, to end an unbroken 11-game run. Wallace, meanwhile, had a painful fall on his shoulder early on in last Tuesday's win at Cardiff.
Albion head coach Carlos Corberan said: "When there is a hamstring injury it is never a short injury.
"With Wallace, he has the problem in the shoulder. He will be out of the team two or three weeks depending how he progresses.
"With Bartley we need to see how he progresses, but it is different at the moment to the situation with Wallace or Phillips.
"After the previous game Bartley was feeling fatigue in the hamstring. There was no specific injury but there was something with the hamstring, but even if the muscle is not broke you need to be calm and recover."
On the plus side, Corberan has seen top scorer John Swift, Jeremy Sarmiento and Josh Maja all return from injury over the past five games, but Adam Reach (quad) and Dike (ruptured Achilles tendon) remain sidelined.
"Dike is working well and keeping to the plan," said Corberan. "If he keeps progressing well, he will be one of the options in the squad at the end of December."
Despite Saturday's injury-time defeat, to end a run of five wins in six games, Albion remain fifth in the Championship going into this Saturday's trip to Tony Mowbray's Sunderland.
They are four points clear of seventh-placed Blackburn Rovers and five clear of the Black Cats - but are now a rather daunting 13 points behind second-placed Ipswich Town.