West Bromwich Albion failed to find a regular source of goals throughout the 2022/23 Championship season as their top scorer ended up with seven strikes.
Brandon Thomas-Asante and Daryl Dike both found the back of the net seven times and Carlos Corberan will be hoping that one of them, or new signing Josh Maja, is able to score with greater regularity this term.
Who are West Brom’s most expensive signings?
The Baggies have spent a lot of money over the years in an attempt to find a consistent goalscorer and that is evidenced by four of their five most expensive signings in their history being centre-forwards.
Player | Fee paid |
Salomon Rondon | £14.6m |
Karlan Grant | £14.1m |
Nacer Chadli | £13m |
Oliver Burke | £13m |
Jay Rodriguez | £11.7m |
Fees via Transfermarkt.
West Brom have been willing to shell out significant transfer fees in search of a prolific number nine and one of their failures in that respect was Brown Ideye, who arrived at the club in the summer of 2010.
How much did West Brom pay for Ideye?
Alan Irvine, who was the team’s manager at the time, swooped to sign the centre-forward from Dynamo Kyiv for a reported fee of £10m in 2014, which made him the most expensive player in the club’s history at that point.
The likes of Rodriguez, Grant, and Rondon have since been bought for more than Ideye but there is little doubt that the Baggies had a shocker with that signing as he ended a rough time in England.
Irvine had described the former Dynamo star as a “powerful” and quality marksman and seemingly believed that the £10m addition would be the go-to man for goals at the top end of the pitch.
He arrived at The Hawthorns off the back of an excellent spell in Kyiv as the Nigeria international plundered 42 goals and 11 assists in 103 matches in all competitions. This included 34 goals in 78 Premier League outings as he showcased his ability to find the back of the net on a regular basis.
Ideye had also enjoyed a strong stint with Sochaux in France prior to his move to Ukraine. The £10m-rated forward had scored 15 goals in 35 Ligue 1 appearances during the 2010/11 campaign, which promoted his transfer to Dynamo.
He started his career, however, with Neuchatel Xamax FCS in Switzerland. The attacker scored 30 goals and provided 16 assists in 61 clashes for the club in all competitions after making the breakthrough from academy football.
These statistics show that West Brom were signing a player who had scored goals for several different clubs in multiple countries, including 15 goals in a major European league in France.
Therefore, it is not difficult to understand why they were confident enough to splash out a club-record fee to secure his signature as they believed that he would do the same in England.
How many goals did Ideye score for West Brom?
However, that was not the case as the Nigerian finisher struggled throughout his time in English football and left the Baggies after scoring seven goals in 31 appearances in all competitions.
Ideye endured a rough debut season in the Premier League as he only scored four goals in 24 matches after his big-money move from Dynamo, which was considerably worse than the 15 he managed in France for Sochaux.
He averaged a dismal WhoScored rating of 6.36 in that time and that was the 22nd-highest score within the squad, out of 26 players – with three of the four players below him failing to start more than one game – and this highlights how disappointing his performances were.
Ideye also ranked fifth and second within the team for how many times he was dispossessed and gave the ball away through poor control respectively per game.
These statistics show that the former Sochaux star struggled to deal with the quality on display at the top level of English football as opposition players found it far too easy to take the ball off him and he did not make up for it with enough goals at the top end of the pitch.
The Nigerian forward later revealed that he felt “overwhelmed” by the expectation that came with being the club’s record signing and lambasted the lack of patience people had with him as he attempted to adapt to life in England and the Premier League.
His struggles may also have played a part in Irvine’s eventual sacking in December of 2019 as the Scottish tactician’s huge summer signing failed to make the desired impact on the pitch.
Tony Pulis came in to replace him in January but was also unable to get Ideye firing to the best of his abilities and that led to the striker’s exit in the summer of 2015 as the Welsh boss opted to allow him to leave instead of attempting to give him another season to find his feet.
How much did West Brom sell Ideye for?
The Baggies reportedly cashed in on him for a fee of €6m (£5m) at the end of the 2014/15 campaign as Greek giants Olympiacos came in with an offer to take him away from The Hawthorns after just one year.
This means that the West Brom flop’s market value plummeted by a whopping £5m in just 12 months as his poor Premier League form resulted in his price halving from the £10m that the club initially paid Dynamo in 2014.
Therefore, Irvine had a howler with the signing of the Nigeria international, who scored six goals in 27 caps for his country, as the move did not have the desired effect on the pitch, as evidenced by his aforementioned statistics, and it came at a significant financial loss for the club.
Ideye went on to score 28 goals and assisted ten in 65 appearances for Olympiacos, which included 23 goals in 43 Super League outings, as he rediscovered his form in front of goal.
The 34-year-old marksman was most recently with Al-Yarmouk SC in Kuwait and endured a difficult spell in Turkey with Goztepe prior to that move. He scored three times in 36 matches for the Turkish side and two of those came in his 35 league games between the 2020/21 and 2021/22 campaigns.
