Albion assistant boss Eddie Newton has hailed the strength of the squad after a team with 11 changes booked a Carling Cup quarter-final place.

The Baggies won 4-1 at Leicester in their last-16 tie, despite an entirely different starting line-up from the 2-1 weekend win against Fulham in the Premier League.

And Newton said: “We were very confident when we named that team because we’ve got a fantastic squad of players.

“We’ve got a great dressing room and the players have that hunger and desire to give competition to whoever’s starting. The change between Saturday’s XI and last night’s was seamless.

“The coaching staff are really pleased with how the boys stepped in and did the job that was asked of them.”

Newton hinted the fringe players who have earned a place in the last eight will get the chance to play in the latter stages of the competition.

The assistant head coach said: “We will see, but I don’t see why not.

“They have earned the right to get to this stage of the competition so we don’t see that changing all of a sudden.”

Albion also used last night’s game to ease back Marek Cech and Ishmael Miller after both spent two months on the injury list.

Cech played the first-half and Miller made a late appearance from the bench.

Newton said: “Marek did very well and he wanted to carry on. But we told him 45 minutes was enough because he’s in the latter part of his rehab’.

“It was also good for ‘Ish’ to get back on the pitch. He needs to get his confidence back and get used to playing at this level again.

“Abdoulaye Meite got a little knock on his knee, but we don’t think it’s anything too serious.

“We’re very pleased that we’ve come through the game healthy on the back of a good performance.”

Winger Somen Tchoyi grabbed another freak goal after a blunder from Leicester goalkeeper Conrad Logan almost identical to the Edwin van der Sar howler that gave Tchoyi a goal at Old Trafford.

Newton joked: “A few of the boys reckon he’s making incantations when the ball’s coming over!

“But the main thing is he is getting in positions to capitalise. When he first joined us, he wouldn’t have been in those positions to take advantage of slips-ups by keepers.

“He’s starting to learn how we play and exactly what we do and he’s starting to benefit from it.”