West Brom have been brilliant this season.
The Baggies are top of the Championship, nine points clear of third place, and they can’t really have any complaints about how their campaign is going.
However, despite their good performances, there is always room for improvement, and one player simply hasn’t met expectations since joining the club in the summer.
Of course, we’re talking about Charlie Austin.
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The striker arrived with a big reputation having scored plenty of goals at Premier League level, but he hasn’t been able to find the net regularly since arriving at The Hawthorns in the summer, and it has to be said that he hasn’t lived up to his transfer fee thus far.
The Baggies paid £4m for Austin last summer, but he’s only scored eight times this term, meaning that he’s costing £500k per goal. In comparison they sold Jay Rodriguez for £5m after he’d netted 22 league goals for the Baggies.
To make matters even worse, three of Austin’s eight goals have been from the penalty spot, and while penalty goals count just as much as any other, it doesn’t take much to find the net from 12 yards.
Paying Austin £70k per week – around £59k above the Championship average according to a study in 2018 – simply can’t be justified after his performances this term, and the fact that he’s often on the bench behind Hal Robson-Kanu, a man who didn’t cost a penny, shows how poor the 30-year-old has been in terms of value for money.
We know that the former Southampton man has what it takes to score bucket-loads of goals – he memorably netted 18 times in the Premier League for QPR in the 2014/15 season – but he’s not shown any semblance of recapturing that form at the Midlands club.
In other news, one West Brom man has been showing he’s too good for the Championship.