Maitland-Niles & Sawyers start in five changes: Confirmed West Brom team news v Spurs
Sam Allardyce has made five changes to his West Brom starting line-up against Tottenham.
Ainsley Maitland-Niles, who joined the Albion on loan from Arsenal on Monday, comes into the side to make his debut, which is little surprise given recent results.
Lee Peltier, Romaine Sawyers, Conor Gallagher and Karlan Grant also return to the starting line-up but that means Dara O’Shea, Matt Phillips, Matheus Pereira, Jake Livermore and Callum Robinson have been dropped.
Albion wasted two good chances to pick up valuable wins against Fulham and Sheffield United, so the new signing was always likely to feature today.
Maitland-Niles should be determined to get one over Spurs – his fierce rival as an Arsenal player.
The youngster has already expressed a desire to work hard and help the Baggies survive, so hopefully we see that positive attitude translate into a good performance.
A win on Sunday would see us close in on Brighton and Burnley, who both drew yesterday – although there’s still a long way to go to reel them in completely.
It could provide a good platform for a run of four games against teams in the bottom half, though we have to overcome Manchester United first.
At the very least, Snday’s game needs to see players learning from the mistakes we made on Tuesday.
Allardyce told the players exactly what he expects them to improve on, and hopefully we see that from everyone – especially Maitland-Niles.
In other West Brom news, This is how much money Lai spent on four big West Brom Jan signings – report.