West Brom bucked a January transfer trend but a major issue awaits them in the summer

It was clear as early as New Year’s Day that West Bromwich Albion’s transfer business was as good as complete within 24 hours of the window opening.

At that stage, the five-player capture plotted and executed by Bournemouth, which made them the envy of the Championship on deadline day, was merely a twinkle in Scott Parker’s eye, but there was an appreciation amongst the Albion fanbase that they’d done their business nice and early.

We all like a bit of transfer excitement on deadline day and, indeed, with Albion we’ve become accustomed to it lately; there were the three loanees unveiled together in 2019 and, more recently, the midfield reinforcements who arrived to aid Sam Allardyce last season.

Yet we knew that January 31 wasn’t going to be too different to January 30. Or 29. Or pretty much the entirety of the month - they’d spent their money, having worked on a deal for Daryl Dike in the weeks and months leading up to the window and the noises coming out of the club were that that’d likely be that.

Then Dike pulled up against Peterborough. Having frozen out Jordan Hugill, Valerien Ismael was forced back into the transfer market for a short-term replacement. Indeed in Andy Carroll, the club could’ve done a hell of a lot worse.

The release of Robert Snodgrass on deadline day did very little to lift the collective mood currently being shown by the fanbase in the aftermath of those dreadful defeats to Preston and Millwall.

Many are still waiting to hear the latest on the future of Ismael, but as we reflect on the transfer window, how can we rank the business conducted by the club?

He’s 21, he has a good goalscoring record, he’s a full US international and he’s signed up on a four and a half year deal. There’s lots to like