Irvine disaster: West Brom had a howler on "dangerous" flop who cost £1.4m-per-goal - opinion

West Brom have had a pretty turbulent past few years in terms of their league positions in the Premier League and Championship, with numerous managers and head coaches trying their hand at bringing some sort of stability to the Hawthorns.

During that time, the Baggies have seen numerous players join the club on loan and permanent deals.

As tends to be the case at most clubs, not all transfer deals end up being particularly successful.

One prime example of this happening at West Brom in recent memory is with striker Brown Ideye, who signed to the Baggies back in the 2014 summer transfer window from Dynamo Kyiv in a deal worth a then-club record fee of around £10m.

After securing this deal, Alan Irvine, who was in charge of the team at that point, said that Brown is a “quality striker” as well as being a “strong, quick, powerful player who likes to get in behind defences.”

Despite this praise from Irvine, the forward failed to show anyone why the club chose to splash the cash on him, having scored just seven times in 30 senior appearances across the 2014/15 season in all competitions, meaning that he cost the club an alarming £1.4m-per-goal.

As well as his lack of regular goals, the Nigerian’s performances in the Premier League weren’t much to shout about either, as WhoScored gave him a disappointing overall season rating of 6.36, making him the second-lowest rated player to start more than one league game in that campaign.

Even though Tony Pulis said that the striker “looked dangerous” on the pitch after he replaced Irvine in January 2015, this didn’t stop the club from selling the centre-forward in the following summer transfer window to Olympiacos.

Taking all of this into account, it’s safe to say that this was not West