Slaven Bilic: West Brom to respect the cup

Bilic revealed his Baggies ranks are ‘tired’ and ‘fatigued’ after the gruelling festive schedule – of which the trip to south east London will be a fourth game in 10 days.

The Albion manager said tomorrow’s trip to The Valley, which comes six days before the two clubs meet at the same venue in the Championship, will be a time to rest players.

“We have to find a balance between changes and respecting the competition,” Bilic said of the third round tie.

“It’s a big competition. It’s stupid to talk apart, everybody is looking forward to it, it’s the oldest competition in the world in football, everybody wants to be part of it and everybody wants to have a good run.

“Also we are tired, we are fatigued, we’ve had this many games, but we have to respect the competition.

“Basically we will try to field a good team with chances to progress and at the same time rest some players.

“I think that everybody else will try to do the same.”

Albion are waiting on scan results for full-back Kieran Gibbs while Grady Diangana is not ready to return for Sunday’s FA Cup trip to Charlton.

The left-back returned from a hamstring injury to face Leeds on New Year’s Day but lasted just 18 minutes before being replaced by Conor Townsend.

Bilic said the Baggies are awaiting the outcome of his scan, but the former Arsenal man will definitely not feature at The Valley in tomorrow’s third-round tie.

Attacker Diangana has not yet been able to train due to the back problem that forced him off against Birmingham last month.

He will not be involved against fellow Championship outfit Charlton, but will be fit to return for the following game – also at the home of the Addicks, in the league six days later.

There has been no further movement on West Ham’s decision to recall Diangana from his stint at The Hawthorns. The Premier League side have two weeks in the January window to trigger the recall.

Bilic said: “Apart from that everything is alright apart from fatigue. Nobody reported to me with important injuries. It’s only Kieran.”

“The rest, of course the boys are tired, we played (all) the games. It’s not only physically but also mentally but no injuries which is very important.”

On Diangana featuring, the boss added: “No, but definitely for the next game.

“His progress is going as expected. At the beginning you only know four weeks, and it’s not a big injury, but it’s not he’s had a setback, it’s all good, but you don’t want to rush too much.

“He missed those couple of sessions, proper sessions, that we didn’t have anyway in this period on the pitch all together, apart from days before game.”