West Brom: Luke Dowling shares Ivan Toney transfer story from The Hawthorns
Former West Brom technical director Luke Dowling has revealed the conversations he held at The Hawthorns about signing Ivan Toney for just £10million.
Dowling explained that, after discussions with Slaven Bilic, they did not want to risk buying a player from League One while they were trying to stay in the Premier League on their limited budget.
He also shared that they wanted to sign a proven striker who they thought could score 20 goals in the Premier League and didn’t think Toney would be that player.
Toney has since gone on to represent England and has scored 36 goals across 77 Premier League appearances for Brentford so far.
Speaking live on talkSPORT [12:04], Dowling shared: “We did have a conversation with them about the great Ivan Toney. You look back now and you say we’d pay it [£10million] all day long.
“What we thought at the time was: we’ve just been promoted to the Premier League, Toney is playing for Peterborough in League One, was it the right decision to take a player from League One and say he’s going to keep us in the Premier League? We didn’t think it was right, and the rest is history.
“At West Brom, we had our owner who was still the owner until a few weeks ago, he was over in China so we would run the club and it came down to myself and Slaven Bilic having a conversation about Toney.
“It was ‘we haven’t got a lot of money to buy players’ because the owner didn’t put money in, and we had to be so brave that a player who had done incredibly well in League One could score probably 20 goals in the Premier League.”
Where would West Brom be if they had signed Ivan Toney?
The summer transfer window Dowling is speaking about was at the end of the 2019-20 Championship promotion season, ahead of the 2020-21 Premier League campaign in which they found themselves relegated after finishing 19th.
Albion’s top scorer that season was Matheus Pereira who scored 12 goals in 34 games and was one of the only players from that squad to keep his reputation intact, although he left in the following season.
The 20-goal striker the club had been searching for never arrived, with Karlan Grant the only new striker to arrive at The Hawthorns, as he managed just one Premier League goal.
Meanwhile, fellow forwards Hal Robson-Kanu, Callum Robinson, Charlie Austin and Mbaye Diagne scored just 14 between them. That Toney-shaped hole in the Albion attack was begging to be filled for just £10million, but they did not feel he was worth it.
On 14 June 2023, it was announced that Dowling had left his role at the club by mutual consent.
Now, with Albion searching for promotion from the Championship once more, this time under the ownership and guidance of Shilen Patel, fans will hope the club does not replicate the mistakes of the past.
In other West Brom news, a Cedric Kipre injury update has emerged.
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