West Brom suffer midfielder setback with captain boost for Norwich trip
Albion fear a longer absence for Jayson Molumby after the midfielder was sent to a specialist over his foot injury.
The Republic of Ireland international has not played since the New Year's Day defeat at Swansea, where he took painkilling injections to get through the contest in south Wales.
Molumby was initially projected to possibly having a chance to be in the squad for tomorrow's Championship trip to Norwich, but Carlos Corberan has revealed the midfielder will now spend a number of weeks on the sidelines, with the exact time frame dependent on a second opinion from medical experts.
The 24-year-old has not been a regular starter for Corberan this season but is typically a regular substitute in central midfield, with Okay Yokuslu and Alex Mowatt commanding the regular starting roles.
"Molumby unfortunately is different because the injury didn't progress in the way how we expected it to progress," Corberan said. "He kept having pain and we have sent him to the specialist, we are going to improve the investigation in his injury, we want a second opinion to manage it better.
"But, normally, he is not going to be ready to play with us in the next weeks. I don't know exactly and expect to know in the next hours, or tomorrow or Monday I will know more about how many weeks he is going to be out. We can guarantee he is not going to be in the next game."
Fellow central midfielder Nathaniel Chalobah is fine after feeling a stomach complaint towards the end of last Saturday's win against Blackburn.
While feeling the Molumby setback, the Baggies are boosted by the return to "100 per cent" of captain Jed Wallace.
The winger has been managing adductor pain since the end of December and was forced to sit out a couple of fixtures but was bright in a cameo against Rovers last time out.
And Corberan confirmed his skipper has fully completed training this week and is in contention to start.
The boss added: "Yes, in the previous game he was not ready to be a starting player, but we bring him from the bench and he was in a good condition, he showed that.
"He has made a normal training now, with the group, he is a 100 per cent condition to make a decision on him."
There was some illness in the Baggies camp this week as the head coach himself had to stay home until the middle of the week. He struggled with a bout of illness from after the Blackburn game until Wednesday and admitted to feeling "terrible", to the point where it was difficult to carry out analysis.
But Albion training went on as planned with Corberan instructing the rest of his coaching staff exactly what the plan was at the club's Walsall training HQ.
"Yes, yes, unfortunately after the game I started to feel poorly, on Sunday it was terrible, on Monday it was terrible, from Tuesday terrible too," Corberan said. "On Wednesday I started to feel much better!
"But we did exactly the same things that we do, we managed the same things we do. When you are a coach it's important that one of the responsibilities is to manage everything, so that things cannot depend on you.
"Even when you control everything, when you're in charge of everything, you need to create one structure that works without depending on any single one. This is the target as a coach to have."
Corberan was fine by Friday as he conducted his media duties with the squad then set to travel to Norfolk this afternoon.
Norwich are 11th and only two points outside the top six at the time of writing. Two of Albion's main play-off rivals Sunderland and Hull, who are seventh and ninth respectively, meet at the Stadium of Light tonight.
