The club’s summer signings are on duty for Alan Neilson’s squad, after late cameos in Saturday’s 2-0 Championship win over Birmingham City.
Head coach David Wagner revealed afterwards centre back Batth had requested to top up his minutes on the pitch against the young Baggies. Spanish winger Sainz marked his first senior appearance with a goalscoring impact in last week’s League Cup defeat at Fulham.
Both are looking to press their first team claims during a busy spell either side of the upcoming international break.
The duo have been named in the starting XI, along with fellow summer signings Vicente Reyes, Pedro Lima and Guilherme Montoia.
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Here’s how we start this afternoon’s #PL2 game against West Brom at Carrow Road 👇 pic.twitter.com/tNCGfSUbwW
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“Yes, both of them will play because they need minutes for different reasons,” confirmed Wagner, with supporters still able to get free tickets in advance to attend the game. “Borja, for sure, because of the injury he had and Danny trains, trains well, but when you have so many games to prepare for you don’t train in bigger spaces (on the pitch).
“He needs game time in bigger spaces to have a feeling for the distances. To be fair to him he asked if he can play some minutes.”
Wagner kept faith with the majority of the senior players who were hammered 6-2 at Plymouth for a confidence-boosting home league win over the Blues.
Przemyslaw Placheta was the only change to the previous Championship line up, with Hwang Ui-Jo dropping to the bench.
“We wanted to have fresh legs and, obviously, most of them didn’t start on Wednesday (at Fulham),” said the German. “It wasn’t a case I said, ‘Listen, you have to correct something and this is why you get the shirt again’, it was all about making sure that we have freshness and we have a clear idea again; to show the idea we had since the start of the pre-season.
“Fulham was a first step and this game confirmed it because we had our normal structure. So Plymouth was a one-off, which you don’t like to have, but everybody has seen what happens if you don’t follow you structure or your pattern. The players have learned the lessons out of this.
“We have spoken about this that in the past maybe if we didn’t score in the first 25, 30 minutes, with everything you invest, then we start to lose our heads a bit and struggle.
“No, make sure you are structured and play to your pattern. The game time is now 100 minutes, or more. You have very good quality and if you play to your pattern then you can control games, you can create moments, and you will score because we have goalscorers in our squad.
“Then you must defend property as well, and fight for clean sheets. This is why I am so happy because it was a very solid, very controlled performance.”
Sainz also featured in the previous Premier League Two 2-1 away defeat to Everton’s Under-21s. Neilson’s squad currently sit in 14th place in the early standings after five fixtures.
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