Carlos Corberan: We don’t want a West Brom defeat to linger in break

The Baggies left for south Wales yesterday and tonight face their final fixture for 17 days with a clash at the Cardiff City Stadium. Saturday’s clash at Sheffield United was postponed owing to the Blades’ FA Cup involvement.

Albion’s mission is to rectify damaging away form which has seen them lose five consecutive games on their travels – four in the Championship and one in the FA Cup – and overall lose ground in the play-off push.

Back-to-back home wins have put Corberan’s troops back in contention, but with a long time to mull over events in the Welsh capital tonight, Albion’s head coach admits a win is important.

“There is only difference between this game and any other, normally you only have one week maximum between the game you play and the next one,” Corberan said of the clash against Sabri Lamouchi’s lowly side, who under the French boss have picked up with three wins from five.

“It means that in one week you can keep or change the feeling from the last game, after this one it’s going to be more than two weeks until we play the next game.

“It means you are going to have this long period of days where you cannot change the result we achieved. That’s why the players know and are very conscious about how important the game is and we want to recover – because the team deserves and needs recovery, it is a necessary break with the number of games we’ve been playing.

“We want to go into this break with the best feeling and the maximum number of points, we want to go for these three points.”

Albion have been hamstrung by a lack of personnel of late but are boosted by the return to availability of striker Brandon Thomas-Asante for the trip to Cardiff.

Seven-goal top scorer Thomas-Asante has missed three games with a hamstring injury but Corberan confirmed he will be among the substitutes tonight.

Midfielder Nathaniel Chalobah is a doubt with muscle fatigue.