West Brom gamble pays off for Carlos Corberan

Head coach Corberan left out his only recognised striker Brandon Thomas-Asante at Deepdale and opted to start winger Jed Wallace up front, only for the rampant Baggies to go goal-crazy to hammer high-flying North End 4-0.

The victory was Albion’s first on the road this season – to emphatically end previously unbeaten Preston’s 100 per cent home record – and Corberan felt his decision to rest Thomas-Asante was vindicated.

Corberan, whose side responded from a run of a defeat and three draws, said: “Sometimes when you are a coach and make a decision to not start with a specific striker, but to play with a player who can play in the position but isn’t a specific striker, is always a risk because when you don’t score the goals it’s because you’re crazy for playing with no specific striker. Now if you score goals, what does it mean? For me it means you have done the correct thing, the correct decision.”

Corberan talked up Albion’s boost in the return of winger Grady Diangana, who has impressed for two games running, in allowing Wallace to shift up front – handing Thomas-Asante a break at the start of a busy week. “For me now we have two strikers, Wallace and Asante after the injury of Maja,” the boss added. “But fortunately after the recovery of Diangana, he can play as a winger, where Wallace was playing before. In one week of games, with games in a row, you need to rest one striker because you have possibility to impact games from the bench if you really need to impact.

“Wallace right now is a striker, Asante the other one, that’s why we decided to play with Wallace. I wanted to have other players in different positions and Wallace on the pitch.”