, West Brom boss Slaven Bilic admits “I was really sad” over Jay Rodriguez departure

West Brom boss Slaven Bilic admits “I was really sad” over Jay Rodriguez departure

West Bromwich Albion boss Slaven Bilic has revealed in an interview with Sky Sports that ‘he was really sad’ following the departure of Jay Rodriguez.

The striker who is now at Burnley left the Baggies in the summer following their failure to win promotion as they lost out in the play-off semi-finals to bitter rivals Aston Villa.

Rodriguez scored 22 goals in 48 appearances for West Brom last season and forged a deadly partnership with on-loan Newcastle man Dwight Gayle.

However, the Clarets swooped for Rodriguez as they activated his £10million release clause and he was able to return to his hometown club.

Bilic admitted that he was saddened by the 30-year-old’s departure due to the goals he provided for the Midlands club.

“I was really sad when Jay Rodriguez left because, between him and Dwight Gayle, we lost 45 of the 82 goals we scored last season, which is impossible to compensate,” the Croatian boss said.

“But that’s why we bought Charlie Austin, Kenneth Zohore and we already had Hal Robson-Kanu.”

Although West Brom lost two of their best players from last term in Rodriguez and Gayle, they have not found goals hard to come by this season.

Goals have tend to be spread throughout the team rather than them being over-reliant on star names and this has helped them in becoming the league’s top scorers with 64 goals.

It was always going to be a difficult challenge to keep hold of Rodriguez with his knack for scoring goals and experience at a high level but with clever recruitment from Bilic and the West Brom hierarchy, they have managed to replace their two talismanic strikers.

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