View: 29-year-old to be axed after dismal showing – West Brom predicted XI v Brentford
West Brom will be aiming to bounce back to winning ways on Friday night when they take on promotion hopefuls Brentford at Griffin Park.
Slaven Bilic’s side were held to a goalless draw by Birmingham at the weekend but managed to move top of the Championship table on goal difference as Leeds lost to Cardiff.
Brentford, on the other hand, announced themselves to be in the running for a top-two finish as they won 2-0 away at Fulham to move one point behind the third-placed Cottagers.
In order to stop Albion dropping more points, we predict that Bilic is likely to swap things up a bit this week by reverting to the 4-3-3 formation that worked so well before the Championship season was halted.
That means that we expect Matt Phillips to be dropped after a poor showing against Birmingham with Filip Krovinovic returning to play in the middle of the park.
As for the rest of the team, Sam Johnstone is predicted to start in goals behind an unchanged back-four of Darnell Furlong, Semi Ajayi, Ahmed Hegazi and Kieran Gibbs.
Krovinovic could be joined by the ever-present duo of Romaine Sawyers and Jake Livermore in the central trio.
In the attack, Matheus Pereira could move out onto the right-wing with 29-year-old Phillips dropping out while Callum Robinson might hang onto his spot on the left-hand flank.
Hal Robson-Kanu did little of note against Blues but we predict that Bilic will stand by West Brom’s top scorer for the trip to Brentford.
Of course, Bilic does have plenty of other options to toy around with.
West Brom’s squad depth is the best in the league and the likes of Phillips, Grady Diangana, Kamil Grosicki and Charlie Austin can all be introduced off the bench.
Brentford will be wise to the threat that West Brom can pose but we hope that Bilic causes more of an impact with his substitutions at Griffin Park than he did in the goalless draw last week.
In other West Brom news, Don Goodman has been raving about Albion’s “unsung hero”.
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