West Brom have "struck gold" with Shilen Patel | OneFootball

The owner of the Baggies has impressed since completing his takeover.

This article is part of Football League World's 'Terrace Talk' series, which provides personal opinions from our FLW Fan Pundits regarding the latest breaking news, teams, players, managers, potential signings and more...

West Bromwich Albion's fortunes have been transformed by Shilen Patel's takeover of the club in February.

Former owner Guochuan Lai paid roughly £200 million to buy the Baggies when they were in the Premier League. A year before he sold to Patel, he was offered a similar fee to what he had paid by a US investor; he rejected it.

When Patel, a Florida-based businessman, made an offer to buy the club, he got it in a deal worth £60 million - only £10 million of which is guaranteed, according to reports from The Athletic.

Despite the former owner's big bucks purchase of his previous 88% stake in the club, he wasn't particularly willing to spend money in the latter years of his tenure.

It was a period in the club's history when supporters were largely in the dark. Now they have someone in charge who is letting there be light, so much so that Football League World'sWest Brom fan pundit, Callum Burgess, thinks that his club couldn't have done any better.

West Brom "struck gold" with Shilen Patel

Burgess has been very pleased with the improved transparency that there has been at The Hawthorns since Patel took over.

"Since Shilen Patel took over the club in January this year, probably going from Guochuan's silence through his entire time as owner of West Brom to the way that Patel has treated the fans since taking over has been a breath of fresh air, really," said the Albion supporter.

"In the summer he gave quite a few statements about what the summer was going to be like, things along the lines of 'There's going to be some growing pains, but it'll be for the greater good of the club,' about how the day after losing in the play-off semi-final to Southampton, Carlos Corberan was in working in preparation for the next season.

"Patel has probably been the best owner that Albion could have asked for in the situation we were in. We've struck gold, really, with him taking over the club, with what he's done since then.

"He's invested in the training ground and just the basics that Albion were asking for. He's an owner that communicates with the fanbase on quite a regular basis and there's nothing more, really, that you could ask of him, so far."

Patel and Corberan are the perfect partnership to take West Brom back to the top

The Hawthorns' faithful can certainly expect much improved spending under the Patel regime than that of the former owner. And when you consider what the Spanish manager was able to do on a very tight budget, Baggies supporters should be so excited about what's to come.

Corberan took a squad that was in the relegation zone when he came in to the top half of the table in his first season in charge, and then went one better the next year and got them into the play-offs.

All of that was done without much backing. Once those shackles are relinquished, he should, theoretically, be unleashed on the Championship, and a return to the Premier League shouldn't be too far away.