West Bromwich Albion striker Craig Beattie has returned to Preston North End to see out the remainder of his loan spell after making a speedy recovery from injury.

The Baggies striker had been expected to miss the rest of the campaign after tearing a hamstring 37 minutes into his loan spell with the Lilywhites, Beattie returned to the Hawthorns to receive treatment on his injury and after regaining full fitness Tony Mowbray has allowed the striker to return to Deepdale.

"Craig wants to come back and train with us and hopefully get a bit of football as well and Tony is happy to agree to that and I'm absolutely delighted about it," North End boss Alan Irvine told pne.com on Sunday.

With North End striker Chris Brown nursing a back injury and Brett Ormerod enjoying a loan spell at Nottingham Forest, Beattie's return couldn't have been better timed with just two games left of the current campaign.

Irvine said: "We've got problems with a few injuries now and Craig has got himself fit again, he's trained for the last few days at West Brom. Tony Mowbray has phoned me on Thursday to tell me that Craig was training again, I spoke to Craig on Sunday morning and it was agreed that it would be good if he could come back up.

"We are obviously stretched to the limit in terms of injuries so there's an opportunity there for Craig to get a little bit of involvement, certainly to do some training with us and he's happy to come back on that basis.

"He knows that he is not going to start the game next week because that wouldn't be right on the lads who have been playing but he's happy to come along and sit on the bench."

North End had expected to see Chris Brown back in action at Plymouth but the big striker did not travel after a back injury ruled him out of PNE's last training session ahead of the long trip down to the South Coast, Irvine admits that he's still unsure as to how long Brown's latest injury will keep him on the sidelines.

"Time will tell whether Chris is available at the weekend or not. we expected him to be available this weekend but the fact is that with the injuries we have got at this moment we are going to be down to the bare bones.

"Craig Beattie is now fit, he's still registered as a player for us so we should have him back, we didn't ancticipate that happening because we thought that the injury would keep him out for the remainder of the season.

"I know that Craig was bitterly disappointed when he got the injury, he was hoping that he would do a good job for us, who knows what he might do between now and the end of the season."

Meanwhile the North End boss has revealed that he has been in close contact with on-loan striker Brett Ormerod over the course of the weekend. With PNE down to just two fit strikers it had been thought that Irvine may recall Ormerod, but the striker has enjoyed eleven starts for Nottingham Forest and has been a key player in their push for promotion.

"I'm in frequent contact with Brett," Irvine said.

"I've spoken to him about the situation, I've explained what happened with regards to Chris Brown at the weekend and I've explained the Craig Beattie situation to him as well.

"Brett's fully aware of what is going on, he's enjoying his football at Forest, he's got what he was hoping he would get, that's a lot of playing time at Nottingham Forest.

"He didn't want to be sitting around in the stand for us, so hopefully Brett will have benefited a great deal from that and hopefully that will mean that we will benefit in the long term."