The summer of 2008 was an important for those connected with West Bromwich Albion.
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.
West Brom got a bargain deal with 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.
Jonas Olsson became a Baggies icon
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.
He was then a regular feature in that role on the pitch during the 2009/10 season, in which West Brom claimed a swift return to the Premier League, as they finished second in the Championship.
The following campaign, though, things would be different in the top-flight for West Brom.
Aided considerably by the presence of Olsson at the heart of their defence, the Baggies were able to avoid another quick relegation from the top-flight.
Instead, they ended the campaign comfortably in mid-table, a run that would continue throughout the Swede’s time with the club.
After suffering relegation and then winning promotion in his first two seasons at The Hawthorns, West Brom never again dropped out of the top-flight while Olsson was on the books.
Indeed, they rarely found themselves ending any campaign in that period with the threat of relegation hanging over them, with the centre back certainly helping to ensure that was the case.
Olsson was a regular feature in the West Brom side throughout much of his time with the club, racking up well over 250 appearances in all competitions before his contract was terminated by mutual consent in March 2017, after just short of nine years at the club.
During that time, the Swede had made himself into a hugely popular figure around the club with his commitment to the cause, and leadership shown to others with the example he set in that respect.
Even when faced with competition for a place at centre back from the likes of Joleon Lescott and Johnny Evans later in his time at The Hawthorns, he continued to do a job for the team, even if that meant stepping in to a less preferred and more unfamiliar left-back role.
As a result, the contributions of Olsson played a vital role in what is by some distance, the Baggies’ longest spell in the top-flight since the 1980s.
When combined with the iconic figure he made himself in that time, that £800,000 fee that looked relatively cheap for a Premier League club even back then, still proved to be money very well spent by West Brom.
