Barry signs up for Baggies’ promotion push

GARETH Barry remains an Albion player after invoking the one-year extension to his contract.

The 37-year-old (pictured) travelled with Darren Moore’s squad to Portugal having reported for the first day of pre-season training yesterday.

That means he will stay at the club for a second campaign, despite a controversial end to his first.

Barry was allegedly involved in an incident on the ill-fated trip to Barcelona under former head coach Alan Pardew and further angered supporters when he was pictured in a nightclub in the build-up to the match with Burnley.

He was, though, injured and not available for that game. Despite that, the fact he played more than 25 times for Albion last term meant the former Villa man qualified for another season.

Albion’s players were put through their paces during a series of testing sessions to assess their base levels of fitness before flying to Portugal for a warm-weather training camp.

The squad were short of Nacer Chadli, Ahmed Hegazi, James McClean, Oliver Burke, Jake Livermore and, initially, Matt Phillips.Chadli and Hegazi are at the World Cup with Belgium and Egypt respectively. McClean, Burke and Livermore have been given an extra week off having been on international duty this summer. Phillips played in Scotland’s 2-0 defeat to Peru in Lima last month, but was allowed to return to the UK before the 1-0 loss to Mexico to fulfil best-man duties at a wedding.

However, the 28-year-old winger was on the plane to Portugal.

It promises to be a big week for midfielder James Morrison whose future continues to hang in the balance. He will underwent the same tests as the rest of the squad as the club’s physios assessed whether his training plan needs to be tweaked.

Morrison suffered a complex Achilles injury in October. The 32-year-old is out of contract later this month but head coach Darren Moore will offer him a new deal so long as he can prove his fitness.