West Brom saw £75m transfer evidence before Man Utd & Chelsea | OneFootball

He's gone on to become one of Europe's deadliest strikers, but Romelu Lukaku's career got a huge leg up when he was taken on loan by West Brom.

An ex-West Bromwich Albion starlet went on to become one of Europe's most prolific strikers, but his first full season came at the Hawthorns as the Baggies recognised the potential what would make him a multi-million pound star.

From Jeff Astle to Cyrille Regis, West Bromwich Albion have a long history of discovering exceptional attacking talent, and another young striker who arrived on loan in 2012 helped the club to their highest League finish in decades.

By the summer of 2012, Albion were in the business of establishing themselves as a Premier League club again. Their 2002 promotion brought a return to the top flight following an absence of 16 years, but they spent much of the next decade yo-yoing between the top two divisions.

Their 2010 return to the division as runners-up behind Newcastle United, however, marked an end to that cycle of relegation and promotion. Their first two seasons back saw them finish 11th and 10th in the Premier League respectively, and in the summer of 2012 they made a loan signing that was ahead of the curve.

Romelu Lukaku's potential was visible from a very early age

Romelu Lukaku's talent had been recognised from an early age. Born in Antwerp, Lukaku signed for the acedemy at the Brussels club Anderlecht in 2006, and made his senior debut for them in May 2009, just 11 days after turning 16 years old and signing his first senior contract with them.

Over the next two years, he shone in the Anderlecht team, making 96 appearances in all competitions for them in total, scoring 42 goals and winning the Belgian league in 2010. Still only 18 years old, by this time he was attracting the interest of some of Europe's biggest clubs, and in August 2011 he made a £10 million switch to the Premier League, signing for Chelsea.

But the 2011-12 season was a disappointment for the player, who spent much of the season in the reserves. In total, he made eight appearances for them that season, but he again demonstrated his full potential when he made his first start for them in May 2012 against Blackburn Rovers, with a Man of the Match performance in a 2-1 win for his team.

At the end of that season Chelsea beat Bayern Munich to lift the Champions League, but his frustration at a lack of opportunity was by this time becoming clear. Speaking to the BBC after the win, he asked the pointed question, "Chelsea really wanted me last summer and paid a lot for me but after a while I thought, are you just throwing money around?" and admitted: "During the conversation with the manager I will see whether he's serious about me or not. If not, I will go away on loan. I have to play."

Lukaku's goals helped West Brom to their best season since 1981

Lukaku's comments about going on loan turned out to be prophetic. West Bromwich Albion were having a summer of change themselves, with Roy Hodgson having left at the end of the season to take the England job following the surprise resignation of Fabio Capello.

Steve Clarke was appointed as Hodgson's replacement, and just over a week before the start of the new Premier League season, it was confirmed that Romelu Lukaku had signed for them on a season-long loan.

It didn't take long for him to make an impact at The Hawthorns. West Brom's first match of the season was at home against Liverpool, and the striker chipped in with their final goal in an impressive and emphatic 3-0 win.

Lukaku was getting the first-team football that he'd wanted the season before at Chelsea, and he rewarded Steve Clarke's belief in him in bucketloads. Over the course of the season, he made 35 Premier League appearances for them - two of the games he missed were against his parent club - and scored 17 goals.

This meant that he ended the season as the sixth-highest goalscorer in the Premier League, with only Robin Van Persie, Luis Suarez, Gareth Bale, Christian Benteke and Michu above him in the charts. This came despite the fact that only twenty of his appearances for the Baggies had been starts, with the other fifteen coming from the bench. He was the only Albion player that season to reach a double-digit goal tally.

And he went out with a bang. His final match for the club was a special occasion. Manchester United were already the champions, and their visit to The Hawthorns was Sir Alex Ferguson's last in charge before retiring after 26 years at Old Trafford.

United raced into a 3-0 lead, but a Lukaku hat-trick helped Albion to claim a 5-5 draw in one of the most remarkable matches the Premier League has ever seen. West Bromwich Albion finished the season in 8th place in the table, breaking the previous season's record with a new highest final league position since 1981.

Lukaku briefly returned to Stamford Bridge before going on loan for the 2013-14 season at Everton, and after a successful season they paid a club-record £28 million to make the signing permanent.

From there, he'd go on to play for Manchester United - who paid a staggering £75 million for his services - and Inter before making a return to Chelsea, where he was unable to break into a regular first-team position again, before going to Napoli in 2024.

And his career has been laden with silverware. He's won league titles in both Belgium and Italy, the FIFA World Club Cup and the Coppa Italia, and has been a runner-up in both the Champions League and the Europa League. And his international career has been similarly glittering. With 89 goals in 121 appearances for the Belgium, he's the second-highest European international goalscorer of all-time, behind only Cristiano Ronaldo, and the fifth-highest globally.

But it was West Bromwich Albion who really gave him that first big opportunity in one of the top European leagues. Already a league champion by the time he was 18, Romelu Lukaku's potential was already a known quantity when he arrived at the club, but his season at The Hawthorns demonstrated that this could be converted into something solid and gave him the big step up that he needed, early in his career. The goals that did so much towards firing them into the top half of the Premier League were ample reward for that faith.