West Brom look set to lose Taylor Gardner-Hickman to Championship rivals Bristol City in the coming days, according to Bristol Live.
The publication reported on Tuesday (22 August) that the Robins were in talks to sign the 21-year-old who can play across midfield or even as a full-back as they look to replace Alex Scott after he completed his move to Bournemouth.
Gardner-Hickman was an incredibly exciting prospect as he progressed through the academy at the Hawthorns, and has featured under Carlos Corberan.
The now 21-year-old has gone on to feature on 60 occasions for the Baggies, with 52 games of those games coming in England’s second tier where he has managed to score two goals and assist once.
While the academy product is still very young and incredibly raw, at this moment in time he doesn’t appear to feature in Corberan’s plans prominently, having only managed nine Championship minutes so far this season.
Last season there was plenty to suggest underneath the rawness there was a future star in Gardner-Hickman, with a look to his Fbref scouting report showing he fell in the 93rd percentile for midfielders in the Championship in terms of tackles per 90 minutes.
His 53.28 passes attempted per match put him ahead of 83% of his positional peers while he also sat in the top 20% of midfielders for non-penalty goals per 90 all while playing a fairly impressive 1169 minutes in the league for the Baggies.
Corberan had used the Bristol-bound midfielder often throughout pre-season, but the Baggies are well stocked in the middle of the park with Okay Yokuslu and Jayson Molumby preferred in the 1-1 draw with Reading and Gardner-Hickman limited to only a cameo in the closing minutes.
A shame
The truth is the Baggies at the moment aren’t in the business of waiting to see if a player might come good, they need instant results and are likely to let players who need time to develop depart this summer as they raise funds for incoming business.
It may well be a deal that in a few years’ time West Brom fans look back on and think, “Why on earth did we let him go?” But at the moment it’s another wage off of the bill that can instead be spent on areas of more pressing importance before the window closes.
The next step for the Baggies will be attempting to shift the higher wages of Grady Diangana and Nathaniel Chalobah before the transfer window closes on 1 September as freeing up that sort of cash would help incoming business much more than the sale of Gardner-Hickman.
This may be one that comes back to haunt the club.
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