West Bromwich Albion journalist and podcaster Adrian Goldberg has been sharing his thoughts on the club’s recruitment and the overall role of Luke Dowling, the club’s sporting and technical director.
This comes after Goldberg recently co-hosted the latest episode of West Brom-themed podcast The Liquidator where he spoke about a range of topics concerning the Midlands club.
On the subject of Dowling and his role in the club’s transfer recruitment, Goldberg had this to say on the matter.
He said: “Although you can praise the recruitment that we’ve done in January – which mostly at least seems positive, and gives us a little bit of hope – it does go back to a point that you’ve [Chris Lepkowski] made previously about the recruitment in the summer and the role of Luke Dowling, who is ultimately responsible; the person who the board would see as being in charge of recruitment at West Bromwich Albion.
“It seems to me as an outsider – I’ve got no special insight into what goes on at the football club – but the force of personality that Sam Allardyce has had suggests to me that Sam Allardyce has come in, and through his contacts in football, he’s identified these new players, and he’s recruited those new players, so that’s where the credit for those goes, [and] the failures of the summer do seem to go back to Luke Dowling.”
TIF Thoughts on Adrian Goldberg’s comments on Dowling and his role in the club’s summer recruitment…
Goldberg does go on to state that he may have been overly harsh on Dowling, though given their recent flurry of activity and having to change manager due to their poor results, you can see where he is coming from.
Looking back to the previous summer transfer window, West Brom brought in a number of players on permanent transfers, loan deals and free transfers as they attempted to strengthen their squad after being promoted from the Championship last season.
After sacking their previous manager Slaven Bilic and replacing him with Sam Allardyce, who then brought in a handful of players throughout the January transfer window, the Baggies currently find themselves in the relegation zone of the Premier League table, despite managing to pick up a point against Manchester United in their previous league fixture.
Given how four of the players that West Brom signed in January under Allardyce’s recommendation as Goldberg mentioned in the podcast, played in the game against United at the weekend, this suggests to us that Allardyce’s signings in January have somewhat overshadowed Dowling’s signings in the summer.
Do you think WBA's summer transfers are to blame for their poor form this season?
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Moving forward, everyone at the club will undoubtedly be hoping that the players brought in during the January window can help the team turn their form around and start picking up some positive results if they want any chance of avoiding the drop at the end of the season.