Carlos Corberan makes 'most difficult' West Brom commitment amid financial challenge

The Baggies signed off for their pre-season campaign with a 4-1 defeat at League One Blues as a threadbare squad was dissected with three late goals at St Andrew's, with the Championship kick off seven days away.

Albion have recruited five players so far this summer – only Torbjorn Heggem and Ousmane Diakite featured against Blues – but Corberan's ranks have been decimated over the summer, with several released at the end of their contracts and Okay Yokuslu, Conor Townsend and Brandon Thomas-Asante sold last week.

The club know they face a steep challenge balancing the books to stay in line with financial fair play PSR regulations and are working with the EFL to recover from the bleak financial outlook post-Guochuan Lai. At the same time, Albion's head coach needs to continue to rebuild a squad, as highlighted at St Andrew's where Jayson Molumby was the only senior outfield player with any experience among the visitors' substitutes on Saturday.

There is the best part of a month to bolster the squad sufficiently but Albion, who continue to be bankrolled by Shilen Patel's Bilkul Football WBA, are having to be smart and resourceful as they look to plug several gaps in the squad.

"I know and I am prepared to face the most difficult challenge of my life as a coach." Corberan told the Express & Star afterwards. "This is what I am prepared to face.

"And I am ready because I love this club and I love these fans, I love them a lot.

"I know that this year I need to fight a lot, and I am prepared to face this, the challenge in front of us.

"Sometimes the idea, everything we always want as coaches, is to have the players quick in pre-season, to have the players to work the idea you have.

"But unfortunately football doesn't always allow us to face the ideal circumstances.

"Now we need to adapt. We have one month in front of us. The only problem is it's true you have the market and play games – so you need to work with both things together. It is not the same when you bring the players in (at this stage) to manage them, the impact, the minutes in the friendly games, the training.

"Now it is a different scenario, where we have to take some risks and the players need to do a quick and probably not the best adaptation to be ready to compete. But it's the situation we have right now.

"There is a lot of work ahead because of course this is what we need."

The first senior summer friendly in front of supporters saw Albion level at 1-1 with 20 minutes to go but poor defensive errors allowed last season's relegated hosts Blues to pull clear with three quickfire efforts, some comical by nature. Kyle Bartley, who was captain, had equalised for the Baggies before half-time.

Eleven members of the 20-man squad selected in the second-leg of last season's play-off semi-final at Southampton have since been let go by Albion – one being sub keeper Josh Griffiths on loan.

"Yes we know that right now we have a very tight squad," the head coach added. "From the last game of the play-offs I had a group of 23 available players from the game against Southampton and from these 23 we have 10 right now.

"We have had new players, two back from on loan, (Karlan) Grant and Caleb (Taylor), that come back to the group.

"We've brought in Joe (Wildsmith) the keeper, brought in (Torbjorn) Heggem and (Ousmane) Diakite and (Devante) Cole the striker. So of course we are still far off the needs we have to compete in the Championship."