A year after lighting up the English League Championship during a successful loan stint with Barnsley, Daryl Dike is heading back across the Atlantic on a permanent transfer.
The Orlando City and U.S. men’s national team striker has finalized a transfer to join League Championship side West Bromwich Albion, the clubs announce on Saturday. Details of the transfer fee have not been released, but Orlando City had been seeking a fee in the $10 million range for the 21-year-old striker.
West Brom is in the thick of the promotion race of the League Championship, currently sitting in fourth place, four points away from the automatic promotion places in the top two, spots currently occupied by league-leading Bournemouth and second-place Fulham.
Dike will join a West Brom attack that is among the lowest-scoring units currently in the promotion race in the League Championship, with the striker position a particular area of need after the failed loan of Norwich City striker Jordan Hugill, who has managed just one goal as the starting striker for the Baggies.
Dike scored nine goals in 21 matches during his loan spell with Barnsley at the start of 2021, an impressive stint that led to plenty of transfer speculation but no offers anywhere close to what Orlando City was willing to accept for the 21-year-old striker.
A key figure on the USMNT’s Concacaf Gold Cup-winning squad last summer, Dike was unable to secure a transfer move last summer and returned to MLS, where he finished the regular season in excellent form, scoring eight goals in his final 10 matches of 2021.
Dike joins a mass exodus of attacking talents leaving Orlando City this offseason, joining Nani and Chris Mueller, with Mueller having completed a free transfer to Scottish club Hibernian.
What do you think of Dike’s move to West Brom? See him having another good showing in the League Championship? Think he could play himself into a USMNT call-up for the upcoming World Cup qualifiers?
Share your thoughts below.
Let’s go!!
Crystal Palace was the rumored EPL for 10-12 milli.
i’d say the key thing is it’s a transfer and not another loan. he can handle the level (based on last season) and he’s not stuck in the situation where no matter how much he scores he has to promote them to be afforded and stay.
the x factor will be getting west brom to score. great defense, soft offense. assume he’s part of that but hopefully not all, he can’t serve himself.
The issue is he goes to the same manager he had last season at Barnsley. The bad news is he plays a 1970s style bunker and loft long balls to your loan offensive player system, That’s good for West Brom and Dike’s stat line because he’s shown he can be productive in that. However it doesn’t help him develop for the NT and improve on his deficiencies.
sorry but the ideal paper transfer is to a coach and system where you’ve been successful. that is not stat padding, that’s common sense. and while a U20 development transfer might involve some playing “against type” for second or age group teams, most first team O20 transfers are for you to join a first team in a role they think you can handle. they aren’t paying millions for a O20 to come in and apprentice and try something new.
to be blunt i don’t think GB has a clue whether his system is wise or how types fit well into it. but dike has had some chances and not excelled. i think he should put himself in a position to succeed and that’s his best chance at anything happening with NT.
Am I wrong or did Orlando agree to transfer Dike for LESS money than they were offered last transfer window? I believe that Orlando was looking for $20 million and rejected offers in the $10-12 million range
MLS has a little bit of this over-valuation problem, which the other teams use against us. Dynamo wanted like $8m for elis and weren’t getting much more than $6m, turned them down based on their theory price. got a reported $1.1m from boavista a window later. your value is what a willing buyer will pay. to be fair, i think it’s anti-MLS bias or gamesmanship, because a year and a half later elis is valued at $8-10m for transfer while on loan at bourdeaux, with some of the same teams (eg celtic) sniffing around. either boavista is being as silly as we were, or playing ok in europe is a better sales platform than playing well here. which is bias because same player.
It’s not really that simple Elis had 3 months left on his contract when he left for Boavista. 1.1 million to leave 11 matches early isn’t bad. I’m sure they thought they could convince him to resign a deal with Dynamo to increase his value as FCD did with Cannon months before selling him but Elis wasn’t buying. The 6 million offer if it was real was also before Covid when clubs had more money to spend. MLS does tend to overvalue but during silly season things are never as simple as they seem. Clubs and agents are constantly leaking false or misleading information to influence the market. I think some MLS clubs are getting smarter in their valuations and negotiations but each team goes thru growing pains the first times they sell a prospect. FCD seems to have learned a lot with their deals for Cannon, Reynolds, and now Pepi. Now time for Pomykal, Ferreira, Che, and Sealy. But it took missteps with McKennie, Cappis, Gomez Brothers, all the way back to Castillo to learn those lessons.
JR: what you’re missing is taking for granted your theory that a late window (in your contract) is cheaper than a middle window, then it’s brain dead to hold out past the $6m offer, structurally. you can be skeptical of me all you want but i find it credible celtic offered $6m then when they apparently are sniffing around now with the new rumors. my personal impression based on weah is SPL teams like our players’ quality on loan but want to get off cheap on the transfers. that is an inherent tension true of a lot of the european second/third tier, complicating transfer efforts. we are no longer the bargain basement where keller goes to rayo in the spanish second. elis is one of the leading players in the whole region. i simultaneously don’t doubt houston shook their head at the offers but think at a point it’s like what you do is set the new team transfer record with the ready cash and move to the next one. getting less money offended you deserve more money doesn’t make sense. don’t get emotional about business. for him to be worth $8m or $20m someone has to actually make that offer. if that was their worth in an auction type situation he’d get bid up there.
Late window in your contract is always cheaper. As you said it’s a business decision. No one is going to pay 6-8 million for Alberth Elis when they can get him for free in 3 months, he’s good but he’s not that good. Houston should have taken the 6, it was above the going rate at the time and as you said a franchise record. To make matters worse Boavista couldn’t even pay the transfer fee. At least Alberth got out after the check finally cleared Cannon’s transfer to Fulham couldn’t get over the line in time.
“I believe that Orlando was looking for $20 million and rejected offers in the $10-12 million range”
Do you have any evidence that there were actual , serious offers” in the $10-12 million range”?.
As far as I know those were just rumors, possibly floated just to jack up the price.
Daly tailed off at the end, possibly because he hit a wall and just wasn’t used to that level of constant use.
If he can approach his previous production he should be better equipped to handle it all this time around.
People forget how inexperienced he was and still is as a pro.
Reply
BBC reported that there was a rejected offer from a “Big 6” team in EPL for 10 million. No way to know how true it was but coming from BBC instead of a tabloid gives it more weight. Depending on sell ons and performance add ons the total might not really be that different. Orlando thought they could win a title if they held onto him. It didn’t work out but the financial loss may not be that big.
The $20 million number was never a real thing, it was a placeholder buy option price placed on the Barnsley loan that everybody knew couldn’t be met. The figure became more prominent when Don Garber of all people referenced it as a legitimate valuation when Orlando wasn’t getting any offers for even half that.
If this gets him consistent minutes and helps improve his game than it’ll be good for him and the USMNT. In any event this should have him match fit for the January window and therefore give him another edge over Zardes.
his problem isn’t club minutes or even club production, it’s cashing in on opportunities when he’s in US NT camp. his bigger concern is scoring in the shirt. sargent and soto are the ones who need to worry about seeing the field to even get called. also, he is offseason now and by the time they get him fit i think they already have january camp going. so his window of opportunity is probably march or the summer friendlies. he’d have had a better chance making the team if he stayed until summer because he might have been in the long january camp if he wasn’t with west brom.
“he’d have had a better chance making the team if he stayed until summer because he might have been in the long january camp if he wasn’t with west brom.”
I didn’t realize that there were loads of big money Euro teams just dying to sign Daryl.
Maybe there were. Maybe Inter were going to sign him to replace Lukaku next season. But if there weren’t he would have passed up a chance to reunite with the manager who helped him make such a big splash and just maybe get WBA promoted.
Frankly Daryl’s place on the USMNT right now depends on:
1. Pepi , Hoppe, Josh, Zardes and Pefok continuing to underwhelm.
2. Daryl tearing it up with WBA.
If he does very well with WBA there is no way this manager does not call him in as soon as he can. After all, he called Daryl in when Daryl was playing that way for Barnsley. Route One football certainly turns off the purists and I know many of you are worried that Daryl’s immortal soul will be compromised by playing that way but I’d rather have him scoring goals and feeling confident. He’s young and he’s smart. He can figure it out.
And besides it doesn’t look to me like Bayern was planning to sign him to understudy Lewandoski.
He needs to secure his club future first.
Then his USMNT future will take care of itself afterwards.
Vacqui, I agree that confidence goes a long way with strikers, but Duke’s deficiencies; timing and direction of runs, decision making in hold up play, and technical skill on the ball aren’t going to improve playing hit and hope. To call the Barnsley ball he played last year “route one” is an insult to route one football. It’s more video game hit it up to the striker hit the special move combo and drill a shot as hard as you can. It’s a good move for Daryl and his club career (big clubs weren’t coming), I’m not sure it helps the USMNT.
V: the flaw in your analysis is he’s being bought by his old Barnsley manager who would probably chase him down this window as well as next. i get your thought process re grab the transfer now, but if it’s an old fan i don’t think it’s as fungible as you do. and that’s a club focused analysis. what about “i want to make the NT” analysis? this will work out for this coming 3 game window like the people who transferred out over the summer and got left off the gold cup or september quali teams. he’s offseason MLS out of shape now, he will miss any long camp to bed in at WBA, but who knows if he’s game shape and playing in january at WBA. so he can’t make a case for european selection based on any club play yet. so his window narrows to the last quali window or then he’s in the mosh pit in the pre-world cup friendlies which will favor the incumbents. makes more sense to me, if you want a NT role, to push this to summer and see if he can get called this winter for NT where no one is winning striker outright. this is a good club move but will make it harder to get in the NT like the people who wanted to do summer club practice instead of US games. but to me as bias against our club players has dropped club ball is the priority over NT positioning. back in the day someone would have shaped this to give them a NT chance. but then they would have been signing in the Spanish second or B.2.
Mr. Voice and JR,
You’re missing the urgency of the situation. We’ve got WC qualifying right around the corner and Qatar will be here before too many more construction workers die.
This team is mostly set. If you’re on the outside (and Daryl is) and you want to get into this team you’re going to have to force the issue, the sooner the better.
If DD wants a USMNT future, the future is NOW.
I’m assuming Daryl wants in on that. For him, any further participation in the December/January camps is a sham and a waste of time.
The USMNT have a pretty clear idea of what the best of Dike is, at this pojnt, in his career. If Pep wanted to take him on at City he might develop a more rounded game than he has now, before Qatar. But short of that, he needs to go where he can score goals, lots of them. Because guess what, Pepi, after his hot start vs. Honduras and Jamaica, has one assist and no goals in his last 5 USMNT games.
Ricardo is a better player now and probably forever but , given how this is playing out, DD has a chance to be as hot if not HOTTER and Daryl needs to do that if he wants to go Qatar.
DD can’t bury Pepi. But he can bury Josh, Pefok, Zardes, Jordan and even Jozy if the manager gets any bright ideas.
All the hype aside, a hot, high scoring forward can’t be ignored. Not even by this manager.
That’s EXACTLY why DD’s old Barnsley manager is so attractive to him. DD knows that he will turn him loose in a way that no one else is likely to.
The USMNT know DD is at least a pretty good Championship level striker. I certainly wouldn’t rate him over, for example, Ivan Toney of Brentford, who has 4 goals and 2 assists. But that might be good enough.
Could he be even better and surprise them? Sure but he isn’t going to do that at Orlando City.
He wants to get into the qualifying squad for Jan 27 vs El Salvador. And if he hits the ground running with WBA , he just might do that. And that would be big for him.
He’s got to force his way onto the team.