Double blow for Baggies

Brunt and Meite facing spell on the sidelines

By Chris Burton   Last updated: 24th September 2008   Subscribe to RSS Feed

Double blow for Baggies

Brunt: Hamstring problem

Related links

Teams

Players

Also see

West Brom have been dealt a major injury blow ahead of their weekend trip to Middlesbrough.

The Baggies are set to be without Chris Brunt and Abdoulaye Meite for Saturday's contest at the Riverside Stadium.

Northern Ireland international Brunt limped out of Sunday's 2-1 defeat to Aston Villa with a hamstring problem and is now facing up to a month on the sidelines.

The Baggies are still waiting on the results of scan undergone by Meite on a troublesome calf injury, but the outlook appears bleak.

It is feared the Ivory Coast star has suffered a recurrence of an old problem, having suffered the injury during the warm-up for Sunday's derby.

Mystery

"They both had scans yesterday," Albion boss Tony Mowbray told the club's official website.

"Brunt has a grade one strain of his hamstring and will be out for three to four weeks.

"We haven't yet had the scan results read for Meite but I would anticipate it being two weeks and a bit more.

"He went through a week's training last week and came through it with flying colours after the same sort of injury.

"That's the mystery for us - that it went in the warm-up, which is miles less intense than training.

"Something needs looking at because it wasn't as if we gambled on him and threw him in. He trained every day and he came in on his day off and did intense one-on-one training just so he was ready for the match.

"It was a big disappointment to us. It's a blow to us losing Meite. But we've still got three centre-halves and we'll pick two to go with and try and do what we do."