Alex Neil still waiting on Preston injury crisis as West Brom visit

Albion head to Deepdale on Monday night to visit a Preston side who have a fabulous home record - they are, though, missing a number of first choice players currently

Alex Neil admits he doesn’t know who among his batch of injured Preston players will be available to face West Brom when he welcomes Slaven Bilic and Albion to Deepdale on Monday evening.

North End are in something of an injury crisis in their defence, with a number of first-choice players all missing with various lay offs.

That culminated in a 4-0 hammering at Hull City during the week, and left Neil pondering his selection, as well as hope that he’d be able to welcome back one or two natural fits into his back-line.

Darnell Fisher, Ben Davies and Alan Browne all missed the KCOM defeat, while Tom Clarke and Andrew Hughes have been missing for a while.

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Ahead of a weekend without football, though, Neil is still playing a waiting game.

“I’m not sure yet who might be available. We’ve spoken about this before – you can cope when players have been missing dotted around the team,” Neil told the LEP .

“You can change a player in one area and it doesn’t affect things, they slot in. It is when you get injuries in the same position – players next to each other – when it becomes hard.

“If you look at the defence which started the opening game of the season and the defence which played at Hull, one player was the same.

“We put lads in that area who tried to get the job done but unfortunately that wasn’t to be.”

Despite his injury concerns, Neil is demanding an answer from Preston, after that mauling from the Tigers.

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The Lilywhites are still, after all, in the play-off places and boast a particularly impressive home record.

He added: “Football, when it’s going easy, it’s easy to take all the plaudits. What I’m going to have to do and the players are going to have to do is take their medicine, which is the criticism that comes our way, which is merited.

“Now, we need to react, we need to respond and we need to do better in the next games coming up.”