Daryl Dike one of four West Brom players Steve Bruce has ‘crucial’ summer plans for
Steve Bruce intends to set up a summer training camp as part of a “crucial” pre-season for four West Brom players who have struggled badly with injury.
Daryl Dike was ruled out recently for the rest of the season, with the headline January transfer window signing yet to feature for the Baggies boss.
Matt Phillips, Kenneth Zohore and Kean Bryan have also not yet played a minute for the former Newcastle manager, and with a compressed summer due to the winter World Cup, Bruce wants to combine holiday and training somewhere abroad.
Bruce said of the four, via the Birmingham Mail: “Pre-season is crucial to them. I’m going to set up a training camp, maybe abroad. Portugal perhaps.
“I’ve done it before – I’ve set up a training camp so that they can have a holiday. From 10am to 1pm they’re still ours, rather than coming here where there’s nobody here for five and a half weeks.
“So they can incorporate a holiday. I know the facilities. So we’ll set up a bit of a camp, but those four in particular will have a pre pre season.”
Creative thinking
After the slog this season has turned into, and the considerable injury issues that have contributed, whatever it takes to get a fit and firing squad next year has to be considered.
The unique circumstances of the World Cup being held at a different time of year is forcing teams to reconsider their usual pre-season schedules.
Players would probably prefer to make their own holiday plans, but it is better than missing out on one entirely.
Winger Phillips is one like Dike who was lost to injury immediately before the current manager got a chance to use him.
Bryan has missed the majority of the season, as has Zohore who has only featured sporadically for the under-23s since the opening games.
Despite a reasonable run for a few games, the derby loss to Birmingham was a return to the dreadful form that saw Valerien Ismael sacked, and continued into the Bruce reign.
How much of a different tune the incoming manager would have been able to get out of this squad had he had some of these long-term absentees available is impossible to say.
But it may be no coincidence that three of the four are attacking players, and there has been a general dearth of quality in that area.
In other West Brom news, a former boss reportedly held “intensive talks” over raiding the Baggies for a favourite player of his.
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