Why Brown Ideye flopped at West Brom — Club explains

Barclays Premier League club, West Bromwich Albion have given a detailed account of the likely reason their former Nigerian striker Brown Ideye failed to hit the ground running.

The club’s director of football administration, Richard Garlick, stated that West Brom ticked all the right boxes though relied on “the recommendations of the recruitment department” before signing Ideye for £10 million, which at that time made him their record signing.

Garlick also attributed Ideye’s flop to the change of coach at the time the Nigerian was brought in from Dynamo Kiev.

At the time, Ideye joined the Baggies, Alan Irvine took charge from Pepe Mel, and Garlick admitted that the former had little or no input in the signing of the Nigerian.

“He was recommended. The target list that was put up for that season had three strikers of which he was one of them which the recruitment department had recommended.

“Unfortunately what happens in football…. at the time it was Alan Irvine who didn’t know the player and was reliant upon the recommendations of that recruitment department.

“Alan was new coming in and had not had a chance to look, so he got presented with it. It wasn’t like he was just plucked out of thin air.

“Those were the recommendations. We had reports on him, he’d been looked at four or five times over a period of time. It wasn’t like we didn’t know the player. There were reports, he’d been seen live.

“But you ideally would want it to be the head coach or the assistant but there was no way that could happen at the time. His goal-scoring record was good, what you could see on the clips was good, he’s actually a really good guy, a good character,” Garlick was quoted as telling an assembly of West Brom fans group.

Ideye spent just a season of the three-year deal at West Brom before completing a move to  Olympiakos in Greece for an undisclosed fee in August this year.