West Brom should target Championship experience when replacing Barnes
Last Friday the news every Baggies fan was dreading was confirmed.
Harvey Barnes was being recalled by Leicester City and in turn, wouldn’t be seeing out the remainder of the season with the club. To put it simply Barnes was absolutely superb in his short time with the club.
The 21-year-old scored nine goals, set up six and put in multiple Man of the Match performances also and his scintillating attacking play made him a firm favourite with the Albion faithful right from the get go! Now as painful as it was seeing Barnes recalled the conversation quickly turned to what will life be like without him and will the shock announcement derail the clubs promotions chances?
Darren Moore was understandably coy when he was first asked the question what are the club’s plans in regards to replacing Barnes. He gave the textbook response in that the remainder of the squad will have to ‘step-up’ and when pressed on possible transfer targets he understandably remained tight-lipped and gave little away except to assure fans that a contingency plan has always been in place if Barnes was to be recalled in January.
Now, plenty of names have already been thrown about since the news broke and the concerning thing is that the vast majority of them have been other promising youngsters, to take on loan from the Premier Leagues.
Yes, the club could strike lucky again and bag themselves another Barnes but it would be a huge risk to take at this very crucial stage of the season.
Firstly there is no guarantee that they will hit the ground running like Barnes did. For every Barnes, there is a Ben Woodburn. The Liverpool youngster is highly regarded at Anfield and his loan move to Championship promotion chasers Sheffield United at the start of the season looked like a perfect move. However, after hardly featuring for United in the first half of the season, presumably because he wasn’t deemed good enough by Blades boss Chris Wilder, Woodburn is set to return to Anfield.
The second reason is the timing. We are still right in the thick of the promotion chase with just under half a season to play. However, the league is still ridiculously close and a couple of defeats on the bounce could see us slip out of the play-off places.
For these reasons, the club need to be looking at bringing in a proven attacking playmaker, if we are to continue as serious top two candidates. I can’t see how money is an issue either.
The likes of Bradley Dack (Blackburn) and Jarrod Bowen (Hull) are now out of our price range due to their superb form so far this season and the fact they now have Premier League teams interested in them.
However, there is plenty of top quality players at this level who could come in and pick up where Barnes left off. The likes of Adam Reach at Sheffield Wednesday, Ollie Watkins at Brentford, Nick Powell at Wigan and Luke Freeman at QPR would all be superb replacements for Barnes and would definitely be tempted by a move to the promotion-chasing Baggies.
I’m not saying it definitely wouldn’t come off, Barnes alongside the likes of Harry Wilson and Lewis Mount at Derby have proved there as some exceptional youngsters out there ready to burst onto the scene, I just feel however that it would be a huge risk to take at this key stage of the season and the best approach to take would be to replace Barnes with proven Championship quality that we know would come in and contribute towards our promotion push straight away.