'Before anyone else': Shilen Patel outlines West Brom transfer strategy after huge Torbjorn Heggem profit

Picked up for just £525,000 last summer - it was evident quite early into his time at the club that Albion had unearthed a gem.

Heggem was arguably one of the best central defenders in the Championship last season - with his form leading to call-ups to the Norway squad.

Fast forward 12 months and he is gone - as Albion bagged a massive profit by selling him to Bologna for £9m.

And in an interview with the Price of Football podcast this week, owner Patel has outlined that this is what Albion have to and will continue to do.

They have signed players that were relatively unknown from abroad, like Aune Heggebo, Tammer Bany and Isaac Price.

There is of course no plans to sell these players - but he spelt out that finding talents, 'before others', is their aim.

He said: "I think it is about costs and resource efficiency. Clubs will fly scouts to South America about five times before they make a bid.

"If we wanted to cast the net wider we needed to have a better tool kit, strategy and approach.

"If we can figure out which plays extrapolate well to the league, we can look at markets where transfer fee expectations are lower, and the wage jump from that league to the Championship is something desirable for the player.

"It is about resource efficiency and finding players before others know they are good."

The wide ranging interview cover a host of topics - with Patel stating that he thought he would be priced out of buying a club in England before the Albion opportunity was presented to him.

He has also touched on the challenges he faced in terms of big decisions when he came to the club.

Yet again this summer, a few high earners have left the club following the end of their contracts.

And Patel spelt out that when he arrived at the club there were players on contracts that 'didn't make sense'.

He added: "There is a broad decision about when you come to any business in distress to try and triage whether people that are there have contributed to the situation or whether you need to move them out.

"Thankfully we looked around and there were a lot of people who were committed to making things better.

"They could have left but chose to stay, so that was one less thing to worry about.

"We set about challenges in the squad, and there big challenges.

"There were a lot of players who had been through a lot of things with the club. 

"Contracts didn't make since. It is nice to have some given their pedigree.

"But we needed to bring the squad age down, the payroll down, or we had no chance of dealing with the PNS challenge that was ahead of us."