Tony Mowbray has West Brom trump card to play ahead of Championship play-off run-in | OneFootball

The striker has been out injured since January, but he is expected to return in April, and he could be crucial to the Baggies' top six hopes.

The fight for the play-offs in the Championship has been an increasingly interesting story which has evolved week-by-week, and we are still no closer to working out who will take the final two places in the top six.

There are just eight games to go in the second tier in 2024/25, and there are still six clubs that are separated by only seven points as the top two leagues in England get set to resume this weekend following the international break.

Coventry City and West Bromwich Albion currently occupy fifth and sixth, with the former a clear favourite to finish in the play-off places after an incredible run of form since Frank Lampard took over at the CBS Arena.

Nevertheless, the Baggies will also stake claim for a shot at promotion to the Premier League, having found a new way to avoid defeats under Tony Mowbray, and they may just have a trump card up their sleeve ready to be played in the next couple of weeks.

Josh Maja, Adam Armstrong link-up could be the difference for West Brom

Josh Maja has been out of action since January after being struck down with a calf injury, and while his team have not shown too many signs of missing him, they will be excited to see him back.

The 26-year-old scored 12 goals in 26 matches for the West Midlands outfit in the Championship before suffering the blow, and it was his strikes early on in the campaign that helped take his team to the top of the table after seven matches.

However, the Baggies went through an interesting run of form in Autumn, drawing 10 games in 11, dropping them back towards the play-off spots, where they have continued to battle since.

While West Brom have not quite shown the signs of a team ready to fight at the very top of the Championship again this season, Maja coming back into the fray in early April, as has been reported by the Express & Star, can only be seen as a positive.

Having signed Adam Armstrong on loan in the January transfer window, Mowbray will have at his disposal two of the very best forwards in the division this season, and if they can find a way to link-up well, then they could prove to be an incredibly dangerous pairing.

Rivals will be worried to see Maja turning this corner, especially as they already know of the threat he poses alone, and combining that with the Southampton loanee will only cause bigger problems in the final weeks of the campaign.

West Brom supporters will hope that they get the early season version of Maja back

While he was on course for a 20-goal season, a lot of the hard work by the former Sunderland ace was done in the first weeks of 2024/25.

A hat-trick on opening day against QPR raised eyebrows across the division and he backed it up by firing in another four times in his next six matches.

His form tailed off slightly before his injury, and there will be hopes that the Maja that returns to action next month is the same one that started this campaign as opposed to the one that was most recently seen at The Hawthorns.

If he appears in that same rich vein of form, then West Brom may just have a huge advantage heading into the final weeks of the season.