£11.5m wasted: "Lazy" £26k-p/w West Brom flop has been draining Lai for 137 weeks - opinion

West Brom have been pretty active in the transfer market over the past few years, with some players being brought in for substantial amounts of money.

As tends to be the case with some players at most clubs, not all players end up being worth the money that gets paid to buy them in terms of what they manage to produce on the pitch.

One figure that falls into this category for the Midlands club is striker Kenneth Zohore, who joined the Baggies back in the 2019 summer transfer window from Cardiff City in a deal worth a reported fee of £8m.

Since then, the 28-year-old, who is currently listed as the highest earner at the Hawthorns with a weekly wage of £26k-per-week according to Salary Sport, has only made 23 appearances for the club across all competitions in which he has netted only five goals.

Taking into account his lack of game time and goals for the Baggies since his arrival, it’s safe to say that the centre-forward has been draining Guochuan Lai’s bank account of £11.5m from his transfer fee and weekly wages combined from the 137 weeks he’s been on the books at West Brom.

Labelled as a “lazy” player in the past by his former Cardiff manager Neil Warnock, it’s surprising that the Midlands club still have the attacker in their ranks and haven’t moved him on either in the previous summer or winter transfer windows on a permanent basis after his loan spell with Millwall last season.

With 17 league appearances for the east London club during the 2020/21 campaign, the Danish international could only find the back of the net twice and ultimately earn himself an underwhelming overall performance rating of 6.38, making him one of the lowest-rated players to start more than two league games according to WhoScored.

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