Albion on tour again

Albion's players are on their second pre-season 'tour' of the summer after staying in the South East following Saturday's Ipswich defeat.

The Baggies, who returned eight days ago from a week in Holland and Germany, travelled to Suffolk on Friday night and will stay in Essex at a training camp until Tuesday.

Tony Mowbray's squad will head home via tomorrow night's 's friendly at Northampton. Mowbray said: "The lads worked extremely hard in Holland. So we wanted to give the lads a few days together, mainly to relax, but also training and trying to tie down the tactical things.

"We are walking through a lot of scenarios and having more of a tactical get-together. We will travel back when we play Northampton on Tuesday night." And Mowbray said Saturday's match at Portman Road was merely phase one of his tactical preparations for the new season.

"I chose Ipswich because I thought they will give us as close a test to a Premier League side as there will be.

"It's about getting the players fit and organising the players. Saturday was the first time I've given any thought to a formation, rather than just putting players out on the pitch. I thought in the first half it worked well. We were fluent, dominated the game for long spells and could have scored more goals.

"People can make their own thoughts about the penalty but we were generally dominant in the first half.

The longer the game wore on the poorer and poorer we got and the stronger Ipswich got."

"I have no qualms about their winner at the death because they probably deserved it."