Charlie Austin claims Slaven Bilic ostracised him at West Brom
Charlie Austin has taken aim at Slaven Bilic over his lack of game time at West Brom before his January loan exit to QPR.
The 31-year-old scored 10 goals in 34 Championship outings last term to guide Albion to automatic promotion but he was left on the sidelines for the majority of the current campaign’s first half.
He featured in Bilic’s final two games in charge and played three times under Sam Allardyce before making the switch to West London.
Speaking on Sky Sports’ Soccer AM [10:00, 27/03/21] Austin took umbrage with Bilic’s decision to continually ignore him.
“It just didn’t work out,” he said.
“The manager went in a different direction and signed two centre-forwards for £15million-plus and it was like, he’s always going to go for that even when results weren’t great he wasn’t changing it.
“Monday to Friday it was just training then coming in Saturday morning training with the fitness coach, like three or four of us, that was the tough side of it.”
Not cut out for PL
As much as Bilic can be faulted for a number of baffling decisions and signings his treatment of Austin is one of the less controversial parts of his reign.
Austin hit double figures last season but four of his 10 efforts were penalties and he was not exactly offering much else in the forward line.
He is not known for his pace or industrious efforts and thus if he’s not scoring then he becomes pretty redundant as a striker.
Austin looked unfit at the best of times and the step up back to the Premier League was always going to be a difficult one for him.
While he proved himself at the top level a long time ago his powers have been on the wane in recent years and a record of 16 goals in 71 league outings for previous club Southampton was pretty woeful.
Maybe he should’ve been utilised more on the bench as he was often cut out of the 20-man squad.
But he was not deserving of many more opportunities and Big Sam’s decision to cut him loose says everything about Austin’s current state.
In other West Brom news, Alex Palmer fails Sky Sports audition in worrying Lincoln display.
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