The £6m West Brom investment that still boggles the mind | OneFootball

West Brom spent £6 million on a striker who never played a minute for the club

Zhang Yuning has emerged recently as one of the better strikers in the Chinese Super League, but there could have been a possibility of him taking the Premier League by storm back in 2017 with West Bromwich Albion.

The Baggies had just finished inside the top ten of the top flight, their highest league position since the 2012/13 campaign, when the likes of Romelu Lukaku were starring in their side.

The summer ahead of the 2017/18 campaign proved to be a bit of a disaster. West Brom looked to build, but in the end, they went in the opposite direction, finishing rock bottom.

Oliver Burke never hit the ground running, Jay Rodriguez's best days in a Baggies shirt came in the Championship, and experienced heads such as Kieran Gibbs, Gareth Barry and, later in January, Daniel Sturridge, couldn't provide for Tony Pulis, and then Alan Pardew once he was sacked.

However, one signing that season stands out among the rest, Zhang Yuning, mainly because he never played for the club during his two-and-a-half years under contract at The Hawthorns.

West Brom wanted a project striker. In the end, he proved to be a massive waste of money.

Zhang Yuning's truly terrible time at West Brom

20-year-old Zhang Yuning was one of the first signings West Brom made ahead of the 2017/18 campaign, but it was one that immediately sent out more questions than answers.

Despite spending £6 million on the Chinese frontman, which would indicate that he would be in and around the first team, he was immediately loaned out to German side Werder Bremen for the first two years of his three-year deal.

The youngster had scored at a decent rate in the youth sides at Vitesse, had four goals for the senior side, becoming the first Chinese player to score in the Eredivisie in the process, and had already made his senior debut for his country.

In China, he was an exciting prospect, and they were looking forward to seeing how he could cope in the top five European leagues.

"His progress will be the subject of great interest here at Albion, but also in Germany and China," Richard Garlick, Albion's technical director at the time, said, but you wouldn't have been forgiven for forgetting about him almost immediately.

At Bremen, Yuning made zero first-team appearances before his loan was terminated. Then, he was sent back out on loan once more to ADO Den Haag, looking to perhaps resume his form in the Netherlands.

Despite scoring five times in pre-season ahead of the 2018/19 campaign, an injury sustained with the Olympic national team saw him make just six appearances in the Dutch top flight before he was once again recalled.

That recall allowed West Brom to cut ties with the striker permanently, selling him to Beijing Guoan in February 2019, where he plays today.

Relegation meant that Zhang Yuning was quickly forgotten at West Brom

West Brom brought in Yuning as they looked to build their Chinese profile, as China was the homeland of their majority shareholder at the time, Lai Guochunan.

However, this deal did nothing to strengthen that relationship, and if anything, the two-year stagnation of Yuning's career almost served to detriment it.

Nothing good came from this deal. The money spent set decently high standards, and perhaps he could have reached those if his loan move hadn't resulted in Yuning playing no football for a year.

If the thought process over their new £6 million striker was to see how he'd develop in Germany with the view of him playing in the Premier League, it failed at every step, as Yuning never played in the Bundesliga, and the Baggies weren't in the top flight a year later, either.

After suffering relegation, the main focus then was getting the club back into the Premier League, rather than the development of a striker who many at The Hawthorns had long forgotten about after a year on the bench.