West Bromwich Albion supporters would have been worrying going into this new Championship season that there wasn’t enough firepower in the striker positions at the club, with Brandon Thomas-Asante jumping ship to Coventry City weakening the Baggies up top.
Now, however, those concerns have very much dissipated with the emergence of Josh Maja as the main leading man in attack for Carlos Corberan’s table toppers, after he managed to bounce back from an injury-ravaged first campaign at the Hawthorns.
Corberan will just hope those injury demons don’t come back to haunt the former Sunderland man moving forward, who was on the scoresheet yet again for the West Midlands side last weekend versus Wayne Rooney’s Plymouth Argyle.
Maja's start to the season
Amazingly, the goal-shy 25-year-old who only picked up one Championship goal from 12 games last campaign now has six to his name this season from as many league clashes, as second-tier defences begin to be scared stiff by the clinical nature of the Baggies number nine.
He only needed 26 touches of the ball against the visitors from Devon to tap home the winner, after new summer recruit Uros Racic put it on a plate for the 5 foot 11 forward to win the tight clash deep into the second 45 minutes.
West Brom will just be delighted that their patient approach with Maja’s injury issues has now paid off, with the promotion hopefuls needing to exercise a similar calmness with striker Daryl Dike soon, who is now back training himself after a long time out in the Hawthorns treatment room.
Whilst Corberan’s men have undoubtedly won with Maja in the here and now, there’s a botched deal from four years ago that will still bother those at the Baggies, with the striker in question – that was once very much on West Brom’s radar – now worth an unbelievable £40m.
When West Brom missed out on Ivan Toney
In conversation on talkSPORT earlier this year, Peterborough United chairman Darragh MacAnthony and Luke Dowling revealed how West Brom turned down the chance to sign then EFL sharp shooter Ivan Toney in 2020 for just £10m, with Brighton and Hove Albion and Celtic also interested at the time.
Dowling said: “We did have a conversation with them about the great Ivan Toney which in hindsight you look back. You’d look back now and say you’d pay it all day long [£10m fee].
“What we thought at the time, we’d just got promoted to the Premier League and we weren’t brave enough to take a player from League One. Is he going to score us the goals to keep us in the league? It wasn’t the right time.”
He more than showed that he could handle the pressures of the top-flight when moving onto Brentford though, after a goal laden few campaigns in Cambridgeshire, with a mightily impressive 72 strikes notched up in total for the Bees across 141 games.
Whilst Toney managed to improve more and more under Thomas Frank’s guidance – with the Brentford manager even labelling the senior England international as “remarkable” last year when discussing his rise with the club – West Brom struggled in the Premier League to be a threat in attack after missing out on the deadly finisher and were relegated straight back to the second tier at the end of the 2020/21 campaign.
1. Matheus Pereira
10
2. Callum Robinson
5
3. Kyle Bartley
3
4. Mbaye Diange
3
5. Semi Ajayi
2
West Brom would only manage to have one player on their roster hit double digits during that term in the form of Baggies favourite Matheus Pereira, as Toney fired home a ridiculous 33 goals in the division below to further add insult to injury.
One that got away
The transfers that nearly happened but never did. This article is part of Football FanCast's One That Got Away series.
The former Peterborough man would then go on to be a wanted figure by the likes of Manchester United and Chelsea among other Premier League suitors, with his predicted price tag once coming in at an eye-watering £70m according to reports.
He would leave eventually depart West London for a lesser £40m, as Saudi Arabia came calling in the form of Al-Ahli this summer, where Toney continues to show off his clinical prowess in-front of goal with a brace on his debut in the Middle East.
West Brom would have loved to have been one club Toney played for on the way to his path to stardom, but they just weren’t prepared to gamble.
Of course, not every punt does pay off like this, as Corberan’s side now just focus on winning promotion back to the Premier League, to then perhaps be more risky in the transfer market.
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