Albion’s striker Brandon Thomas-Asante is poised to exit The Hawthorns and join Championship rivals Hull City.
Thomas-Asante, 25, would follow fellow key regular member of Carlos Corberan’s squad Okay Yokuslu out the exit door with the Turkish midfielder set to return to Trabzonspor for around £1.3million.
Striker Thomas-Asante – who has spent two seasons at the club – like Yokuslu was in the final year of his contract with Albion.
The Express & Star understands Hull’s offer is less than the £3m quoted in some reports. It is claimed in Hull the agreed fee for the striker’s services is less than £2m.
He checked in for just £300,000 two summers ago from fourth tier Salford City, who are understood to have a sell-on fee of any profit made.
The Baggies were always likely to fend offers for a raft of players entering the final year of their terms with financial fair play regulations to adhere to following £11million losses in the latest set of accounts. These will rocket further in the next set of accounts to June 2024 and any Championship club can only lose £39m over three seasons to stay in the guidelines.
In Yokuslu’s case, the midfielder was among the club’s highest earners and will allow for a big saving.
The club’s financial situation is not perilous like last summer following the takeover from Shilen Patel but the exits of Yokuslu and Thomas-Asante will be welcome in balancing the books when both could leave for free next year.
They leave an already-short Albion squad looking very light ahead of the new campaign, however, which is under two weeks away.
It is expected Corberan will be able to use some of the funds raised by the two transfers as he restocks his squad, notably the attacking department where Albion already needed boosting in the striking department prior to Thomas-Asante’s exit.
