Kieran Gibbs excited by return of West Brom's creative sparks
Albion man Kieran Gibbs is relishing the prospect of attacking duo Oliver Burke and Nacer Chadli returning to Tony Pulis’s first-team thoughts.
The Baggies left-back, a £5million summer signing from Arsenal, has impressed during his first five outings as an Albion player.
Gibbs has been impressed with the standard on show in training from his new team-mates and is especially keen to see the wide pairing get back into full flow.
Scot Burke, who joined for £15million from RB Leipzig this summer, returned from a muscle injury to join a young Albion team that bowed out of the Checkatrade Trophy at Shrewsbury on Tuesday night.
“Going forward I think the performances have gone up each game, from what I can see since I joined anyway,” said the England international. “That’s something to look forward to.
“In terms of personnel and squad there’s a lot of quality, especially people like Burke, who I’ve seen in training.
“He looks dangerous, but he’s been injured. Chadli too, everyone knows about, coming back to add to that – it’s a well-balanced team that we’ll need to wait to click and then what we can achieve is up to us.”
Chadli could feature for Belgium in games against Bosnia & Herzegovina and Cyprus on Saturday and Tuesday.
Gibbs, 28, believes a number of his Baggies team-mates have extra reason to perform to a high standard this season.
He cited defender Jonny Evans, midfielder Grzegorz Krychowiak and attacker Jay Rodriguez as just three of Pulis’s charges that will have extra fire in their belly.
He added: “They’re players that have points to prove individually, that’ll help the team. People like Jay (Rodriguez) who has missed a lot of football, he wants to come back firing.
“You’ve got Greg (Krychowiak), who’s come on loan from a big club and wants to prove himself in this league. Jonny Evans has had a few great seasons here already and wants to carry on. It’ll all help the team drive forward.”
Two wins, two defeats and three draws have Albion 10th in the early stages of the season but Gibbs maintains the aim is to finish as high up the Premier League as possible.
“The players have the ambitions in their head to finish as high as possible,” he said. “That’s the main target. The players’ mentality too, they’re all looking to push themselves.”
