Dara O'Shea

Made his league debut for West Brom today against Brentford for the second half. No goals scored while he was on the pitch and impressive stats as per below.

Hegazi the regular centre-back was dropped after an unspecified training ground incident and is now linked with a move to a Saudi Arabian club.

Hopefully we'll see O'Shea feature a bit more now this season after some fantastic performances at U21 for us.

4 Clearances 89% passing accuracy 100% of duels won 1 blocked shot 1 interception

Bilic clearly rates O'Shea highly, even more so after his league debut:

I am gonna praise him, because I know he ain’t gonna be ‘big time’. Dara is the future, and he can be present. Dara is one of the reasons why when I came to the club we didn’t sign another defender.

They wanted to bring in not only Semi [Ajayi] but another, because they were lacking numbers. I didn’t want to.

Why? Because of Dara. I believe in him. Based on today, he’s a player. I love Dara.

See: https://www.balls.ie/football/dara-oshea-slaven-bilic-422918

Good manager to learn the position from!

Interesting to see what happens with Hegazi - he hadn't been starting behind Ajayi & Bartley. Then dropped from squad and it happens to be the game Bartley gets injured, great timing for O'Shea. I would imagine O'Shea will definitely play in FA Cup, could be featuring in league over busy period (depending on Bartley fitness).

West Brom manager Slaven Bilic says that Dara O'Shea has been offered a new contract by the Championship leaders.

The Ireland U21 international has made a breakthrough into the West Brom first team this season. He made his Championship debut last month, coming off the bench against Brentford to play 40 minutes. He subsequently started in the FA Cup against Charlton earlier this month.

"He has been offered a new contract, definitely," Bilic told The Express and Star about the centre-back.

"I have said from the start, from July, that he is the present and the future of the club.

"I love Dara O’Shea. We all love him.

"But forget how nice he is as a kid, I love Dara as a football player.

"In the summer, we lost three players in that position – (Craig) Dawson, (Mason) Holgate and (Tosin) Adarabioyo plus (Ahmed) Hegazi had surgery.

"But we only brought in one. The club wanted to bring in more, and the only reason we didn’t was Dara.

"From day one, he showed dedication, motivation, readiness to learn and, more than anything, potential and quality."

O'Shea, who is from Dublin, joined West Brom in 2016 from St Kevin's Boys.

https://www.balls.ie/football/slaven-bilic-dara-oshea-west-brom-424194

Starts for west brom today

Had a good game today

Isn't centre back his first position?

Has he ever played right back in the under 21s?

Wings? They're only the band The Beatles could have been.

Think it is only a positive. Minutes on the pitch at RB or CB is what matters.

Potentially good for us too as we have plenty of CBs coming through or already established so having more options at RB is a plus.