Jed Wallace shares Shilen Patel takeover verdict after bumping into new West Brom chairman
West Brom captain Jed Wallace has shared his verdict on Shilen Patel’s takeover after bumping into the Baggies’ new chairman at The Hawthorns.
Patel and his company Bilkul Football WBA, LLC have acquired Guochan Lai’s controlling stake in the Baggies, with the US businessman completing his handover replacing Lai as chairman ahead of Albion’s win over Coventry City.
The takeover has excited supporters and pundits alike as they hope that the new ownership will see the start of a period of improvement at The Hawthorns and Wallace has confirmed that the West Brom players feel the same way.
As quoted by the Baggies’ website on Saturday (3 March) he said: “Me and Conor bumped into our new owner before the Southampton game, and it was great to meet him.
“I’ll be honest since I’ve been at the football club I’ve loved every minute of it, but there has been a little bit of a dark cloud hanging over us with the ownership issues. This is a brilliant, brilliant football club and now we’re going to have owners in the Patel family that are going to care for the club. How
“That’s what the fans, staff and players all deserve. From my time at Millwall, I know about great chairmen with the late John Berylson so I hope this will be a similar relationship with Mr Patel – that he’ll be involved with the players, and be at plenty of games at The Hawthorns.
“The fans will then see that we’re going in a new direction and I’m really, really proud to be a part of that.”
Will Shilen Patel be able to lead West Brom and Carlos Corberan to the Premier League?
While it was obvious that supporters were fed up with Lai’s running of West Brom, it was perhaps never really mentioned that the ownership issues at The Hawthorns would have been directly impacting the players and their mentality.
However, the financial uncertainty would have directly impacted the players and should the Baggies have slipped into administration as many feared, it could well have seen a max exodus of players to lower the wage bill.
Hopefully, under Patel’s management, Albion can avoid all those issues and continue climbing the football pyramid. Carlos Corberan has done incredibly well to make this Baggies side competitive with the limited resources at his disposal.
Patel has already attended at least one game at The Hawthorns, a welcome sight for fans who rarely if ever caught a glimpse of Lai. Supporters will be hoping that becomes a regular occurrence just as Wallace suggested.
In other West Brom news, Scott Sinclair has reacted to what Mikey Johnston did in the Baggies’ Championship win over Coventry
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