Sky Sports make absolute mockery of West Brom after holes poked in EFL story
Sky Sports will broadcast over 20 West Brom matches this season – but they might not have many Albion fans to show them to.
Everyone’s favourite former sporting and technical director Luke Dowling was Sky Sports’ guest of honour on Monday (6 August) as he sat alongside Mike Wedderburn and Dharmesh Sheth in the studio to explain how his old role at West Brom – and other clubs – used to work.
To the unsuspecting fans of clubs Dowling hasn’t worked at, it might have seemed like quite a good insight into the behind-the-scenes workings of a transfer window. However, to the more trained eye of a West Brom fan, it was hard to listen to any words come out of his mouth without thinking about Ahmed Hegazi, Kenneth Zohore, Karlan Grant, Mark Harrison et al.
Dowling, who’s unsurprisingly not added anything to his work experience on his LinkedIn page since leaving West Brom after three years in 2022, was responsible for some absolutely horrific pieces of work in the transfer market. And while it’s understandable to talk about the likes of Zohore and Grant, his biggest crime was what the did to the West Brom academy.
Dowling fiddled while West Brom burned
As reported by Steve Madeley on The Athletic website in August 2019, Dowling angered staff and coaches by effectively cutting off the academy from the first team. He sent an email out to all the staff that “banned coaches and players from the Under-23s (now U21s) and academy from using the main entrance at the Baggies’ Great Barr training ground”. He also stopped them from using the same canteen and meeting rooms while young players “were told they could no longer use the main car park”.
That was followed by an exodus of senior figures, such as the aforementioned former academy manager Harrison, who went to Aston Villa – and we all know what happened next.
Wind forward a few years from that debacle and Aston Villa are in the Champions League, skirting the fine line between a PSR-induced points deduction and financial bliss, partly thanks to Harrison leaving The Hawthorns to head to Birmingham five years ago.
One of the ways Villa have managed to avoid a PSR breach this summer is by selling young players with Tim Iroegbunam, who was signed from West Brom in 2021 for next to nothing, heading to Everton for £9million.
Meanwhile, Albion are struggling in the Championship, selling off first-team players like Okay Yokuslu, Conor Townsend and Brandon Thomas-Asante for roughly £5million combined with further doubts about players like Jed Wallace, John Swift and even young star Tom Fellows.
That’s Dowling’s legacy at West Bromwich Albion Football Club, wrecking an academy founded by Aidy Boothroyd in 2003, put on the map by Dan Ashworth and flourished under Harrison. He turned one of West Brom’s greatest assets into a laughing stock that’s still haunting fans of the Black Country club to this very day.
West Brom work with EFL over PSR issues
Just a couple of days before Dowling’s appearance on Sky Sports News, the broadcaster reported how the EFL had apparently imposed a business plan on the club. Rob Dorsett wrote on X on Saturday (3 August): “[WBA have been] placed under EFL-imposed business plan as [they are] on course to breach PSR rules.
“Any transfers and wage costs now have to be agreed with [the] League.
“Albion [have] been working closely with EFL for 18 months, to try to solve problems of [the] previous ownership.”
Express & Star journalist Lewis Cox quickly reacted to that story, writing on the newspaper’s website: “The Express & Star understands no such official plan has been received at The Hawthorns.” He added: “The relationship with the EFL is a strong and transparent one.”
Dorsett then backtracked, saying: “The EFL Business Plan dictat has been issued in the last 24 hours. I believe the club have yet to receive the formal letter. But Albion bosses knew they were at risk of breaching PSR so have been liaising closely with EFL for [the] last 18 months.”
It doesn’t seem like there’s much of a story then other than Dorsett initially saying the club had a business plan imposed on them by the EFL, and then saying that the business plan was due to be issued. But all the while, as Cox says, the relationship between Albion and the league is a transparent one and it seems unlikely that Sky Sports would get any kind of information from them before the club does.
West Brom, Shilen Patel and the EFL are no doubt working together because the EFL won’t want to see another great club of theirs – especially a founding member – suffer a fate similar to that of Everton, Nottingham Forest, Derby, Bolton, Reading and so on.
Albion fans should be fully aware of the PSR issues the club is facing right now, issues that have been caused by the man Sky Sports put on a pedestal and seemingly had Wedderburn gushing over live on their main news show this week.
Guochuan Lai understandably gets a lot of flak from West Brom fans and he always should. He hired Dowling, he took money out of the club and he got everything wrong time and time again.
But as for Dowling himself, to sit there with a smug grin on his face as he’s asked about the work he did a few years ago to ruin West Bromwich Albion’s future, that stings. That’s a real kick in the teeth to every Baggies fan watching their show who’s been reading a lot lately about PSR and how it threatens to consign us to at least a few more years in the Championship – or worse.
In other West Brom news, Stan Collymore took aim at the Baggies in an X-rated post on social media.
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