James Morrison, Darren Fletcher and Chris Brunt to fight off sickness

Albion's sickness-hit star trio should be fit for the Boxing Day clash with Swansea.

James Morrison, Darren Fletcher and Chris Brunt were all struck down a day before Saturday's 2-1 defeat at home to Bournemouth.

Morrison was substituted at half-time and neither Fletcher nor Brunt completed the 90 minutes.

But all three have been in training this week, and are expected to be OK for the trip to Wales.

They're availability has added significance with both Salomon Rondon and James McClean banned for the next three games.

"You can see that freshness wasn't quite there for the first part of the game and that hurt us as a team," said Albion's director of performance, Mark Gillett.

"Every club in the Premier League will work hard to limit illness as much as you can, but players are people and they've got lives.

"They've got kids in nurseries, and unless you lock them up for 10 months of the year, you can't completely eliminate it."

Albion's head doctor reckons the trio's willingness to pull on the shirt against Bournemouth says a lot about the team.

"That says everything about the courage and cohesion of the group," he said.

"They get out there and try and do it in those circumstances.

"You don't expect people to empathise with footballers but sometimes they'll get out there in circumstances when normal people won't even contemplate it. That was one of those occasions."

Losing two players to three-match bans is never easy to contend with, but the worst time it could happen is before two games in three days.

"Obviously the players don't get as much recovery time and the biggest risk for muscle injuries is fatigue, so if you're playing the same team three days apart that risk of injury increases," said Dr Gillett.

"We'll do everything we can to reduce that risk but the time is the biggest risk factor and we've got no control over that."