West Bromwich Set to Hijack Deal for £80 Million-Rate Manchester City Star…

The previous season had just seen the Baggies win promotion back to the Premier League as Championship title winners, after two years in the second-tier.

As a result, the emphasis will have been on strengthening the first-team squad available to manager Tony Mowbray at The Hawthorns, to ensure they could be competitive in the top-flight.

In the end, West Brom would sign ten new senior players during the 2008 summer transfer window.

One of the last to make their arrival at the club during that period, was Jonas Olsson.

The final day of that year’s summer transfer window saw the Baggies complete the signing of Olsson, from Dutch side NEC Nijmegen.

It was reported that the Midlands club paid around £800,000 to sign the centre back from the Eredivisie outfit, with the Sweden international signing an initial two-year deal at The Hawthorns.

Interestingly, that fee paid by West Brom was only slightly higher than the €750,000 Nijmegen were said to have paid to sign him Swedish outfit Landskrona BolS three years earlier.

Given what would happen over the subsequent years, the Dutch side may have felt as though they may have missed out on a much bigger windfall from the sale of Olsson to the Baggies.

That, though, will not have been of concern to those connected with West Brom, who even to this day, will no doubt see the signing of the centre back for that price, as a major bargain.

Admittedly, Olsson’s first season at The Hawthorns did not go all that well for West Brom at all, with the club suffering an immediate relegation from the Premier League, finishing bottom of the table.

But while that would then prompt a number of key individuals to leave the club in the summer of 2009, Olsson remained, and took on a key leadership role within the team.