Comment: West Brom should beg Jay Rodriguez to stay

The Baggies top scorer has emerged as a potential player of the season over the past few weeks thanks to series of relentless hard-working performances capped off with important goals.

It’s fair to say Rodriguez has grown into the season following his £12m move from Southampton last summer.

After scoring just three times in his first 20 appearances for the club, he’s now got three in his last four, and eight since New Year’s Eve.

When you delve further into the statistics, you realise just how important the 28-year-old has been to the team this season.

He’s netted seven of Albion’s 27 league goals, which is roughly 26 per cent, but he’s scored 11 out of 37 in all competitions, which is 29.7 per cent of the team’s goals.

The only players in the Premier League who have scored a higher percentage of their team’s goals in all competitions are Harry Kane (35 per cent), Mohamed Salah (34.8 per cent), and Glenn Murray (36.8 per cent).

In fact, Brighton striker Murray is the only player in the bottom half who has scored more than Rodriguez’s 11 goals in all competitions, having struck 14 times for the Seagulls this campaign.

In the past two games, Rodriguez has tucked away his only sniffs at goal.

According to Opta, he’s scored 60 per cent of his clear-cut opportunities this season, putting him sixth on that list ahead of Kane, Murray, and Salah.

Top of that particular tree was Jamie Vardy, who converted 68.4 per cent of his clear-cut chances.

It’s difficult to recall too many glaring misses from Rodriguez in 2018, apart from perhaps one at Stamford Bridge that he hit too early when he should have taken a touch.

He was not as lethal in 2017 but there were extenuating circumstances to that slow start.

Last season he only started nine league games for Southampton and at the beginning of this season he was ferried all over the pitch by Tony Pulis.

Left wing, right wing, behind the striker, and up top by himself, his versatility actually dented his own chances of a regular run in the team up front, where he could do the most damage.

At times under Pulis, particularly away from home, he was so far back on the wing there was no way he could have threatened the opposition’s goal.

Alan Pardew played a more attacking brand of football but when he finally hit a hot streak of form in January, the now-departed head coach decided to drop him in favour of Daniel Sturridge.

It was a bizarre decision because Rodriguez had just scored five goals in seven games and had stunned Liverpool with a brace at Anfield.

He’s rediscovered that scoring knack in the last four games and the fact he has had such a successful 2018 while the allegations of racial abuse from Brighton defender Gaetan Bong have been rumbling away in the background speaks volumes about his character.

When Ben Foster pledged his allegiance to the club for next season he urged those team-mates who were up for the fight to follow suit.

Based on his performances, Rodriguez certainly fits that bill.

Last time he was in the Championship he scored 21 goals in 42 games for Burnley in all competitions. He was just 22.

Now he’s 28, and even though the Championship has evolved, this writer is confident he would score a shed-load of goals in that division.

He would be forgiven for moving on, because he’s in the prime of his career and has ambitions of getting back into the England squad.

He’s bound to have plenty of suitors and the lure of the Premier League is great.

But Rodriguez is no mercenary, he’s one of football’s good guys, and he stayed at Burnley and Southampton for several years to try and make it work. He’s still loved at both those clubs.

Hopefully he can be persuaded to stick with the Baggies and join in the promotion charge next season, because it’s far more likely to be successful with him, than without him.