West Brom will hope to never repeat £15m transfer disaster | OneFootball

West Bromwich Albion made a transfer clanger in their relegation season from the Premier League with the £15m signing of Oli Burke.

West Bromwich Albion had built a reputation of being one of the smartest and most well run clubs in England, but the summer of 2017 saw a slight shift and one transfer in particular was perhaps representative of what was about to come.

For much of the previous decade before that transfer window, West Brom had established themselves as a mid-table stalwart in the Premier League, with the occasional flirtation with a tilt for the top seven and the European spots.

The Baggies were safety personified for the middle class of English football, previously a yo-yo side but now, with smart decision-making off the pitch, firmly ensconced in the top-flight.

However, that level can only be interesting for a while for supporters before frustration and boredom kicks in, with a desire to play more entertaining football and bring in more intriguing signings.

The summer of 2017 saw that and saw them splash the cash, too, but the £15 million addition of attacker Oli Burke from RB Leipzig was one that undermined what Albion had done before, and symbolic of what was to come.

In previous seasons, pretty much every signing that West Brom made ensured the floor of their performance level would only be raised, and if a gamble was to be made, then it would be done in a low-risk manner.

For example, the infamous loan of Serge Gnabry, whereby he barely got a sniff for Tony Pulis’ side before becoming a star in Germany.

It didn’t work out, but it didn’t matter too much because he was there more to be the icing on the cake – but the cake was still good enough.

Burke, on the other hand, arrived as the cake, to murder the metaphor even further, and that was very un-Pulis and very un-West Brom; with the foundation and platform not actually there.

That meant if Burke’s floor was lower than expected, then so would the Baggies be. It was a high-risk, high-reward transfer that did not remotely pay off and was an unusually negligent deal for the club.

Injuries hampered the start to his career at The Hawthorns, and he could barely get into the side before poor results and full football led to the departure of Pulis in late-November.

Having only made three appearances to that stage, Alan Pardew then threw Burke into the squad, and he came off the bench in Pardew’s opening game, a goalless draw at home to Crystal Palace.

A week later, Burke was again trusted by Pardew as he came off the bench to try and impact an eventual 1-0 loss to Swansea City at the then Liberty Stadium.

However, Burke would then fail to find any consistency in terms of selection, being named as an unused substitute in three of the next nine matches, of which he was also left out of the squad in three others; starting one game.

As Albion sank to a fairly humiliating relegation in the 17/18 season, finishing rock-bottom of the Premier League despite having finished 10th the season prior, Burke managed just two league starts in that ill-fated campaign.

There was, however, still some residual hope from Baggies fans that dropping down into the Championship could be a blessing in disguise when it came to their investment on Burke, as a £15m forward would surely have a great chance of tearing up the second tier?

Well, that wasn't to be the case either, and after just three Championship appearances with no goals or assists to his name during the first-half of the 18/19 season, he eventually departed the Baggies on loan for Celtic in January 2019.

He'd fare considerably better in Glasgow, scoring four goals and providing three assists in 19 total appearances, before heading back out on loan to Spanish La Liga side Deportivo Alaves the season after.

Burke eventually returned to The Hawthorns in the summer of 2020, but would soon be out of the door for good, as he signed for then-Premier League outfit Sheffield United in a swap deal that saw Callum Robinson move in the other direction.

For years, West Brom had been careful and built an extremely strong and solid team with an excellent mentality, and had constructed a team full of good footballing intelligence.

To gamble and plan to build their attack around an inexperienced player such as Burke, who was yet to have a real breakout campaign or actually even find his preferred role, was bizarre.

Ralph Hasenhuttl described Burke as having ‘an empty hard drive’ in relation to his perceived unwillingness to perform his defensive duties during his time at Leipzig, and that doesn’t necessarily strike the neutral as someone who would be ideal for a Tony Pulis side.

Mid-table security perhaps became confused with stagnation at The Hawthorns, and they gambled on the likes of Burke to take them to new heights towards the top of English football – and it cost them their Premier League status in the end.