Wright View: Daryl Dike needs West Brom fans on his side, some reactions are pathetic
Daryl Dike has endured a hellish two years at West Brom.
Since joining the Albion in a deal in excess of £7million from Orlando City in January 2022 after previously impressed on loan at Barnsley in the Championship, the USA striker has managed just 32 appearances in all competitions for the Black Country club.
In those games, he’s scored eight goals and when considering the quantity and severity of his injuries in the last 25 months – plus the fact that he’s only actually started 17 times – it’s quite a good record. Also, West Brom have won all but one of seven games the 23-year-old Oklahoman has scored in.
The colossal American made his first appearance of the season as a starter in the FA Cup win over Aldershot Town on 7 January. Carlos Corberan, rightly, substituted him off at half-time after he scored a goal that meant as much to him as Gonzalo Montiel’s winning spot-kick in the World Cup final in 2022.
Dike’s delight was clear for everyone to see. Finally, I thought that he was back for good this time. Finally, I thought West Brom have a striker who’s going to at the very least fire us to a play-off position in the Championship.
Corberan continued to use Dike sparingly. He came off the bench with little incident against Blackburn, Norwich and Birmingham in the Championship before he replaced Brandon Thomas-Asante in the 55th minute of the trip to Ipswich on Saturday (10 February).
With his first touch of the ball, he had me out of my seat by flicking a header onto Andi Weimann at the back post. Dike’s was back with a bang with an assist.
Unfortunately, Weimann brought out his inner Diego Maradona and his goal – as well as Dike’s impressive assist – was rightly chalked off by referee David Coote.
I thought to myself – as did most West Brom fans – that Dike is back and he’s going to be amazing.
Sadly, he went up for an aerial challenge with Ipswich’s Harry Clarke minutes later and you could clearly see in replays that he landed awkwardly on the ankle that caused him so much grief over the last year.
Twitter (I still can’t bring myself to call it X) and Facebook were then abuzz with differing reactions from West Brom fans.
Most of them were saying how gutted they are for the striker, who was visibly distraught as he was paraded around the home support at Portman Road. But some showed a real lack of empathy and understanding.
Some West Brom fans react shockingly to Daryl Dike injury
“Can we just sell Dike now?”, one Albion fan asked. What? How? A young lad has just gone down with yet another injury, seemingly putting his career in jeopardy and you ask that. Also, how do you expect to sell a player who’s constantly injured?
“He’s taking the [expletive] now,” another West Brom fan exclaimed on Facebook. Yes, I’m sure he meant to injure the part of his body he underwent surgery on last year and missed almost 10 months of action.
These are just two examples of a minority of Baggies fans who are absolutely clueless. They’re probably the same ones who still have an issue with Juninho Bacuna for reporting alleged racism or the ones who think it’s acceptable to storm a football pitch because a Wolves fan in the home end said “yay” after they scored a goal.
Dike needs more support than ever. He needs us.
Luckily, the vast majority get that but there’s always a minority of small-minded idiots who manage to stand out.
In other West Brom news, it was disgraceful what Coote made Dike do after he was injured against Ipswich.
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