West Brom's Jeremy Sarmiento suffers injury setback

The Ecuadorian missed out of tonight's 1-0 home victory over Sheffield Wednesday after feeling pain in his left leg muscle during a cameo against Preston at Deepdale on Saturday.

Boss Carlos Corberan has maintained a wariness of managing the loanee's workload after a lack of regular football previously. The head coach spoke of the 'risk' in increasing the minutes of the Seagulls youngster, something he was very conscious of.

Albion edged beyond lowly winless Wednesday through John Swift's early goal to climb to fifth in the Championship, despite Sarmiento joining strikers Josh Maja and Daryl Dike on the sidelines, while Grady Diangana was dropped down to the bench after some illness over the last 48 hours.

Corberan said: "The risk with Jeremy to play the game, whenever he is playing more minutes, always there is a risk because he's a player who hasn't had the habit to play games. It looked like he was recovering well, from the game against Millwall, and I had him in mind when we were preparing for Preston, but from the muscle perspective he arrived at Preston with half a full recovery.

"He had some pain in the quadriceps. From our medical department, they understood it was just normal from the fatigue of the game, after it being a long time without playing.

"That's why I decide not to play with him in the first XI against Preston and I'd have him ready from the bench. He was playing some minutes and at the end of the game, he felt pain in the muscle, in the left quadricep.

"With this pain, he was receiving treatment on Sunday and when the doctors checked – when the pain was there and didn't disappear, they made a scan – yesterday, it showed an injury. It is going to keep him apart from the group for four weeks. It's difficult."

Corberan's side are now unbeaten in five with back-to-back victories as they head to Blues' St. Andrew's on Friday night for the final game before the international break.

Albion's head coach added 'it is difficult to accept' injuries to Albion's two summer attacking signings Maja and Sarmiento, particularly in the manner of Maja's ankle injury late on in the non-penalty incident at Bristol City.

"The fact we don't have Maja or Sarmiento for the next four weeks, the two players who we brought to the club to help the attack, it is difficult to accept," the head coach said. "The first injury of Maja was an accident, in an action that from the point of view of the referee wasn't a penalty. We lost him for eight weeks.

"The next one, Sarmiento, was because the recovery of the game wasn't right and he suffered an injury for the minutes he was playing, something we knew could happen. It's something that I have been very, very conscious about, when I've given minutes to him. He had some history of injuries, plus no habit to play games.

"When you force him to play more minutes, you are taking a risk – as a club, we need to be in the highest level of awareness, to reduce the risk of suffering injury.

"It's difficult, because when I heard yesterday that he would be injured for four weeks, it's going to affect you. It doesn't mean we don't have solutions, but I never want to lose any player."