We all know the story by now. Bids from Spurs, transfer request turned down, ‘that tweet’, to scoring the winner away at Villa followed by being dropped and massive interest in the last few weeks from numerous amounts of teams. But just like before, Jeremy Peace, and Albion, rightly, have stayed strong to reject bids and keep top goalscorer, Saido Berahino. West Brom have shown over the past few weeks that we won’t be pushed over easy and that we have a right to fight and keep our £25m England striker. On Sunday and Monday, Jeremy Peace rejected two club record bid from Newcastle United of a believed £21m and £24m, including an enquiry from midlands rivals Stoke City. Which, in my opinion, was the best thing to do for the club and for the team.

I know a lot may not agree with my thoughts. Why keep a player who may not want to play for us? Why reject bids of £20m+ for a player who doesn’t even start and has 18 months left on his contract? Well, the reason is simple. Staying in the Premier League is worth a lot more than Saido Berahino. Money in football is ridiculous nowadays, and there is only one place to be, the Premier League. With clubs making around £100m just for staying in the league, it really was not worth selling our best-attacking player to a relegation rival. Plus with Albion only being a few places clear of the relegation zone it really is not worth the risk.

We’ve also all got to remember that even though fans do make football, it’s a business at the end of the day and for Jeremy Peace it just adds more and more value onto his club when he comes to sell it in the near future. There’s no doubt that Albion’s owner will make a tidy profit after making the club into a so-called ‘established top flight club’. But along with that, he has a home-grown, twenty-two-year-old goalscorer as one of his main selling points. Any potential buyers know how much value Saido Berahino can be to the club. Alongside this, Albion are apparently feeling very confident that they will be able to get at least £10m compensation in 18 months time if the Burundian-born player doesn’t sign a new contract and leaves when it expires. Without knowing the complete ins and outs of the compensation rules, Berahino will be still under 24 and if signs for another British club, thus meaning Albion are due compensation, decided through a tribunal.

The timing of the bids was never going to help Newcastle or Albion out at all. No doubt Tony Pulis and the scouting team (whatever is left of it) would have identified potential replacements for Berahino, but it was just the time that was left in the transfer window. With less than 48 hours to go it would’ve been crazy to sell him without knowing whether clubs would be willing to sell, the extortionate prices we would’ve had to pay and just whether we would have had the time to bring these targets in. We needed to improve in January, not weaken.

Jeremy Peace did the correct thing by keeping the player, now it’s just down to Pulis to play him, in his best position. Since the summer debacle, Berahino was pretty much put straight back into the starting eleven, scoring six games so far in this campaign. It may not sound a lot just six goals, especially with the amount he scored last year but you’ve got to remember that this man has been sat on the bench for nearly three months now and he is still Albion’s top scorer. He won’t score goals off the bench and whilst on the pitch strikers such as Solomon Rondon and probably one of the worst players I’ve seen play for the Baggies, Rickie Lambert, struggling for goals and for fitness, it shows just how vital and that it is a necessity that we get Saido Berahino back onto the pitch and back in form.

Saido Berahino is our best-attacking player, proved by the amount of money teams were willing to offer and how we would happily reject £20m upwards on a player with only 18 months left on his contract. He is our player, we pay his wages, we had a right to keep him and now we need to play him. Pulis and Peace need to prove that they made the correct decision and the only way that will happen is by playing Berahino.

I for one, cannot wait to see Berahino back on the pitch and banging the goals in to keep Albion in the Premier League for what may be the biggest most, important season ever.