Newcastle v West Brom: Albion must take advantage of Covid crisis club Toon

The Baggies take on Newcastle tomorrow desperate to bounce back from their heavy loss to Crystal Palace last weekend.

But when they get there, they will have no idea which players they will be facing with Steve Bruce’s squad having been ravaged by coronavirus.

The Magpies saw their previous game against Villa postponed after they were forced to shut their training ground to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

It was supposed to reopen on Monday. That was put back to Tuesday.

But it is still unclear just how many players have got the virus with Newcastle’s media team opting against posting any training pictures this week in a bid to not give anything away.

With the club remaining tight-lipped on the situation, it has been reported Bruce could be missing as many as 12 players tomorrow.

The Premier League would allow them to call the game off if 14 squad members were affected.

But while facing a severely depleted Newcastle comes with some big advantages, it also has its pitfalls.

There was always going to be pressure on the Baggies when they travelled to St James’ Park. With Bruce’s men expected to finish in the bottom half, this was always going to be an opportunity to pick up some points.

But if Newcastle do have a heavily depleted squad, the pressure will intensify on the Baggies to get the three points they so desperately need.

Bilic too is feeling the heat, with reports re-emerging this week that is his position is under threat if results don’t soon improve.

They were largely based on that fact 10-man Albion collapsed against Palace last weekend.

The Baggies were well in the game – with the scoreline at 1-1 – before Matheus Pereira received a controversial red card.

The key to getting a result at Newcastle tomorrow is making sure there is no hangover from their subsequent collapse and 5-1 loss.

But after impressive performances against Tottenham, Manchester United and Sheffield United prior last weekend, Bilic has told his players there is no need to dwell on what went wrong against Palace.

“On one hand it’s hard to brush it (Palace) off, it was a big defeat, a big defeat at home,” the head coach said. “But it was not normal circumstances. I’m not trying to find excuses but the biggest reason why we lost that game 5-1 is because we were one man down after half an hour.

“We cannot forget, and I told the guys, that I am not happy with our performance with 10 men. It was not good enough.

“But still we cannot forget we were playing with 10 men. For the whole of the first, when it was 11 against 11, we were good, we were positive.

“We attacked. We hit the bar and then equalised after conceding a very unlucky own-goal.

“I’m still very angry with the way we gave up at 3-1.

“But I told the guys that we can’t lose confidence because we worked so hard before that game to get it.

“We got that confidence through our performances, through training, and we have to remember those 45 minutes against Palace when we were all in and when we were good.

“We haven’t lost our confidence because of the 5-1. We go to Newcastle confident.

“We are confident because we have worked really hard in training and because of our performances against Burnley, against Spurs against Manchester United.

“We got confidence from our win over Sheffield United.

“We have been in a position in all our recent games to get a result.

“We have shown that really well recently.”

Pereira’s red card means he will miss Albion’s next three games.

But Albion have been boosted by the return of Jake Livermore – with the skipper having himself struggled with coronavirus recently.

He will likely compete with Filip Krovinovic to replace Pereira in Bilic’s 3-5-2 system.

“Jake was hit with Covid quite hard but he is back now,” Bilic added.

“He has trained all this week. And everyone else is okay.”