Carlos Corberan full of praise for fasting Baggies star during Ramadan

M’Vila has been without a club since leaving Olympiacos – where he worked under Corberan – last summer. He impressed in a cameo in the Bristol City victory on Saturday, doing so while fasting in daylight hours during the Muslim month of worship. Corberan said of M’Vila’s introduction: “Not only a bonus, I know – not I think – that he’s a very good player and I know that he needs game time to achieve his level. M’Vila with game time is a very interesting player. He has a very positive, competitive mentality, if he didn’t then he doesn’t have the career he has.

“In the last three years he played more than 3,000 minutes for Olympiacos every year. Olympiacos is a very demanding club, in the domestic league and Europa League or Champions League too.

“We bring him in knowing we have the challenge to make him ready and fit. Now we will use these days to achieve his best level.”

M’Vila’s Baggies captain Jed Wallace added his admiration for the midfielder. The winger said: “We’ve got a great group, even Yann’s not played for a year and he is doing Ramadan and he’s come on for 15 minutes, I thought he was brilliant.

“There are things you don’t see, his professionalism. Yann was brilliant, he’s worked hard day in, day out and the manager knows the quality he’s got.

“It’s hard enough coming on when you’ve got a belly full of pasta, let alone when you haven’t eaten since the morning, probably 4am. He was brilliant and his career speaks for itself.”

Albion’s first-team squad have been handed a breather away from the training ground until a return on Thursday. They have Sunday off and will return to train in preparation for the Good Friday return on the road at Millwall.

Skipper Wallace, who netted his side’s second in the victory over the Robins, admitted the break comes at a welcome period for Albion, who have lost just once in 10 games to strengthen their play-off credentials in recent weeks.

“To be honest we had one of those weeks, it’s easier to say now as it’s not an excuse,” Wallace said. “We’ve had a little bit of illness, myself, Okay (Yokuslu), Swifty’s been a bit rough, it’s that slog I’ve spoken about before, the period from Christmas to this international break is really tough.

“We need this break now, obviously Matty Phillips is a massive boost back in training and hopefully Josh isn’t too far away. The break comes at a really good time and it was important to get that win for the training ground to be nice and positive.”