Why are West Brom refusing to let Saido Berahino leave?

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Though many may applaud West Bromwich Albion’s stance on Saido Berahino’s future as a long overdue stand against player power, there is a danger that a promising player’s career is stagnating. One of football’s well-worn adages is that clubs should not seek to keep an unhappy player, but it seems West Brom are trying their level best to do just that. Having knocked back a £24 million bid from Tottenham Hotspur last summer, the Baggies have just rejected two £20 million bids from Crystal Palace and Stoke. One of last summer’s longest transfer sagas promises to drag on once again.

The effect of the new TV money and the boost this has given to Premier League clubs’ buying power receives a great deal of attention. However, one consequence of this cash influx that often goes under the radar is that clubs of West Brom’s size are no longer incentivised to sell their star players. They can also pay their players big wages in an effort to keep them.

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This has eroded the old pathway that used to exist for prospects such as Berahino – moving from lower-league club to medium-sized Premier League club to Champions League club. Nevertheless, as N’Golo Kanté’s recent move to Chelsea demonstrated, playing for one of the ‘big’ clubs remain alluring for players. So, there exists a situation where players still want to move on, but clubs have no reason to sell them.

A succession of Premier League clubs have put up good money, and in excess of £20 million has to be considered ‘good’ for a striker who is far from the finished article. The 22-year-old gained recognition from outside of the west midlands in 2013-14 when he scored a fine winning goal in a West Brom win over Manchester United at Old Trafford. 23 goals in 63 Premier League starts is a fair to middling goal-scoring ratio, especially for a team that focuses primarily on defending. Berahino’s main asset is his movement – he makes intelligent runs in behind defences and is blessed with adequate; if not quite blistering, pace.

However, he found himself out of favour under Tony Pulis last season though he still made 31 league appearances. Too often, he found himself deployed in a wide role with the more physical Salomon Rondon preferred through the middle. Pulis has a patchy history when it comes to coaching attacking players. He attempted to evolve Stoke’s style through the acquisition of players such as Tuncay and Eidur Gudjohnsen. Ultimately, they found themselves frozen out. Pulis’ defenders could cite the cases of Matthew Etherington and Jermaine Pennant who he managed to get a tune out of.

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Rather like Raheem Sterling, Berahino gets a terrible press. True, he has been poorly advised and misguided in the past; such as when he took to Twitter to lament owner Jeremy Peace and to say he would never play for West Brom again. Tales of a ‘troubled upbringing’ are often a resort to lazy cliché, but it really is the case with Berahino. He and his mother escaped from Burundi in 2003, six years after his father was killed in a civil war. The grapevine suggests that Berahino can be a difficult customer in training. Nevertheless, though there are standards of professionalism that must be met, and it is worth remembering that is the job of a manager to manage difficult characters, especially the talented one.

A further irony is that Pulis is exactly the type of manager to bemoan the influx of foreign players and demand quotas for English players, while right under his nose his employers are acting against the interest of an England under-21 international. Berahino might not be worth the figures that are being quoted, and he has a long way to go before he convinces the wider public. He deserves the opportunity to succeed or fail in his own merits, and West Brom’s behaviour towards him seems vaguely spiteful.

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