Their new Maja: West Brom ready move to sign EFL Golden Boot winner

After seeing their team fall short of the Championship playoff picture last season, West Bromwich Albion fans will be desperate for new manager Ryan Mason to be a success from the Hawthorns dugout.

It’s a very risky appointment, considering the 33-year-old has little to no experience as a manager outside of the comforts of Tottenham Hotspur. Still, it’s a bold and adventurous appointment that might well pay off, especially if promotion is reached.

He will surely want plenty of new signings to join him at the Baggies to try and put the West Midlands club back on the map, with a potent EFL goal-machine now reportedly on his shopping list.

West Brom ready to move for EFL ace

As per journalist Darren Witcoop via his X account, West Brom are among several clubs pursuing the services of Queens Park Rangers striker Charlie Kelman this summer transfer window.

It’s even stated that the Baggies are ready to make a move for the recent winner of the League One Golden Boot, with his transfer valuation coming in at around the £850k mark, as per Football Transfers.

Witcoop hasn’t named the other clubs allegedly chasing after the former Leyton Orient loanee, so it will be interesting to see if West Brom do go on to land their desired target, with Sheffield United once looking at Kelman, according to other reports.

Ruben Selles’ Blades will no doubt be in the promotion race alongside Mason’s men, with a hope that West Brom come out on top to secure a deadly marksman for their new manager, winning him his own Josh Maja-style figure in the process.

How Kelman could be Mason’s own Maja

Much like the lethal Nigerian, Kelman hasn’t had everything his way across his varied career to date, away from his goalscoring heroics last season for the O’s.

Indeed, before his majestic 27-goal heroics during the 2024/25 campaign, the 23-year-old unfortunately blew hot and cold for many of his other loan sides, with a paltry five strikes coming his way on the books of both Gillingham and Wigan Athletic, prior to everything clicking at Orient.

Maja endured similar barren patches of form himself before finding a location that suited him well at the Hawthorns, with the injury-prone 26-year-old only finding the back of the net a matter of five times as well when lining up for both Stoke City and Fulham.

Now, however, the on-fire duo will have discarded any bad memories they have with those past clubs, knowing they have found their goalscoring mojo as strikers now that very rarely need a second invitation to hammer a glorious effort home.

It’s clear when studying the table above that both centre-forwards in question are more content with peppering opposition ‘keepers with regular shots rather than getting involved with play outside of their fox-in-the-box approach, with Kelman only averaging a mere 6.9 accurate passes per League One clash last season, alongside Maja only making 13.5 of his own.

Therefore, Kelman could be well suited to the way West Brom feed their potent strikers, with assist king Tom Fellows perhaps tallying up even more than the 14 assists he managed all across the 2024/25 campaign if the 23-year-old were to don Baggies blue and white shortly.

He was even hailed as an “intelligent” forward player by journalist Josh Bunting last season, with Kelman just praying now that he can show off his goalscoring prowess up a division in the EFL.

He has never actually scored at the intimidating level, but West Brom took a gamble on Maja coming good with only three second-tier strikes next to his name on his arrival, meaning Kelman might just explode into life too as Mason’s very own version of the clinical 26-year-old.