West Bromwich Albion have always struggled to keep hold of their promising youth players.
Very rarely has a prospect gone on to play for the first-team, let alone remain there for years on end. It is a trend that is starting to grow even more in recent times.
The start of this season brought about rather encouraging signs as the newly-appointed Slaven Bilic took it upon himself to promote both Nathan Ferguson and Kyle Edwards into the senior fold, but the euphoria surrounding that lasted merely a few months.
Both are out of contract in the summer, so there are already question marks about their futures at the Hawthorns while the 19-year-old defender is subject to interest from several European heavyweights, leading to the club potentially selling him on in January.
This week, 16-year-old starlet Jovan Malcolm was linked with a move to Ligue 1 champions Paris Saint-Germain while in the summer, the Baggies were powerless in stopping hotshot Louie Barry swap the Black Country for Barcelona and Morgan Rogers jumping ship to Manchester City.
You can reel plenty more names off too – Izzy Brown, Yan Dhanda and Jerome Sinclair are three more.
But what makes the players want to leave? None of them have become a star overnight, they’ve only picked up a bigger paycheck in pursuit of elevated personal acclaim.
The problem could lie with the club itself.
Yes, they are well on the way to reaching the Premier League this season. However, there’s not a real success story that encourages a youth player enough to stick around.
No clues: Can you name all of these Premier League icons? Test your knowledge below…
Take Rekeem Harper, for instance, Bilic quickly persuaded him to sign fresh terms despite interest from Liverpool and Juventus, but since then, he’s only featured for a total of six minutes in the league and hasn’t been seen since.
There is not one player that has come through the system to become an Albion legend, not one player that has made hundreds of appearances in the blue and white stripes, not one player that has even been around for more than a season or two, ever since the Baggies academy was looked at in such prestige awe.
It needs to change soon. Otherwise, West Brom will continue to lose their talent left, right and centre.
In other Baggies news, Slaven Bilic has been given a big boost ahead of January…
