West Brom regret signing Nigeria international

West Bromwich Albion are regretting the signing of Nigeria international Brown Ideye who just left the club after just a year.

Ideye joined West Brom last year in a club record £10m but was offloaded this summer after the signing of Salomon Rondon.

Ideye made 31 appearances in all competitions for Albion, scoring seven times before joining Greek club, .

Read: Brown Ideye says lots of players use 'juju'

Director of football administration Richard Garlick revealed that although the club did their homework before signing Ideye, the process of his recruitment was flawed.

Garlick explained that the change of coach, with Alan Irvine replacing Pepe Mel, contributed to the signing process not being as tightly controlled as Albion would have liked.

"He was recommended," Garlick told the Albion Assembly fans group.

Read: Brown Ideye to face Arsenal in UCL

"The target list that was put up for that season there were three strikers of which he was one of them which the recruitment department had recommended.

"Unfortunately what happens in football.. at the time it was Alan Irvine who didn't know the player and was reliant upon the recommendations of that recruitment department.

"Recruitment works where the department put recommendations forward, they sift through players, they get to a stage where they can put it into the coaching staff, be it the assistant manager, manager head coach or whoever it is and they get the final say and sign off of it.

Read: Brown Ideye shows off his Bentley

"We've never signed a player that the head coach didn't have a say and sign off on. In that case Alan wasn't aware of those players. Unless there are alternatives put forward, you go off the recommendations of it.

"In hindsight they all should have been thoroughly reviewed. But, if you remember, Pepe Mel was on the way out so he wasn't really doing any recruitment work.

"Alan was new coming in and had not had chance to look, so he got presented with it.

"It wasn't like he was just plucked out of thin air.

Read: Sunday Oliseh ignores Brown Ideye

"Those were the recommendations. We had reports on him, he'd been looked at four or five times over a period of time.

"It wasn't like we didn't know the player. There were reports, he'd been seen live.

"But you ideally would want it to be the head coach or the assistant but there was no way that could happen at the time.

"His goalscoring record was good, what you could see on the clips was good, he's actually a really good guy, a good character."