View: Bilic must ring changes for West Brom v Newcastle as Wigan loss highlights fatigue
Slaven Bilic is likely to ring the changes when his West Brom side take on Newcastle United in the FA Cup on Tuesday night.
Albion have progressed well in the cup so far, dispatching Charlton and West Ham with 1-0 victories in the capital with a largely rotated side.
It is no surprise that Bilic made wholesale changes to his starting line-up for those games and although the Baggies have now reached a serious stage of the competition, it’s unlikely that the manager will stick with a similar side that lost to Wigan on Saturday.
Bilic has been a fan of consistency as of late.
He has only made two changes since the win at Millwall six matches ago and one of those was forced due to Romaine Sawyers’ suspension and the other was to bring in Ahmed Hegazi to replace an underperforming Kyle Bartley at centre-back.
That consistency worked for most of February as West Brom won four of five games since Bilic named his line-up to take on Millwall at The Den.
However that run of victories came to a screeching halt on Saturday when Wigan, who were in the relegation zone before kick-off, won 1-0 at The Hawthorns.
It was a turgid display by West Brom and it really seemed as though some of Bilic’s star performers could have been tired out by the relentless run of fixtures in February.
In a month of 29 days, the Baggies played seven matches – pretty much a match every four days.
And when matches are coming at you that fast, it can be hard on the legs and rotation becomes a necessity.
But due to West Brom’s strong form and the fact that rotating his squad in December led to a poor run of results, Bilic avoided that and it could have been a contributing factor to the loss against the Latics.
West Brom’s priority this season has to be promotion to the Premier League – ideally as a top-two side in the Championship to avoid the stress-inducing play-offs.
Albion’s second-string has done well so far in the FA Cup so why not show faith in them again?
Newcastle are hardly in the best of form at the moment so switching things up for this match could be exactly what players like Matheus Pereira, Filip Krovinovic and Jake Livermore need after an exhausting, yet highly productive, February.
In other West Brom news, one Albion star was head and shoulders above the rest against Wigan.