Albion academy chief: Our academy players will be even better than Saido Berahino

Albion's academy chief today claimed the Baggies could produce better players than England new-boy Saido Berahino in the near future.

Mark Harrison, who coached Berahino from the age of 11, believes the club have youngsters in their ranks with more potential than the in-form striker.

Berahino could make his England debut tonight in the Euro 2016 qualifier against Slovenia at Wembley after bursting onto the Premier League scene at The Hawthorns.

And Academy manager Harrison, who oversaw the striker's development, believes the future is bright for the club's home-grown talent.

"I have probably said for the last four or five years that there are players coming through, and people took it with a pinch of salt," said Harrison, who succeeded Dan Ashworth in the academy hotseat six years ago.

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"Saido is one of two or three players that could have come through, but there are certainly others coming through now and there are some with more potential than Saido.

"If these boys don't come through, the football club will have done something wrong somewhere. As an academy, we can get them to a certain stage and the rest comes down to the club as a whole.

"Please don't take it in a conceited way, but there are more players who should go on to play in our first team, without a shadow of a doubt."

Albion's academy was launched nine years ago with Berahino, who had arrived two years earlier as a refugee from Burundi, one of its first recruits. Striker Adil Nabi is now pushing for first-team recognition while teenage forward Jonathan Leko, a refugee from DR Congo, is also highly-rated.

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And Harrison believes the Baggies are now reaping rewards for showing patience when some fans questioned the lack of home-grown talent.

"Everyone in the academy gets judged ultimately on one thing – that we produce players for the first team," he said. "Thankfully everyone understood that the journey was not going to be a short-term one.

"I wouldn't call it (Berahino's emergence) a relief, but I think it's a great recognition of a lot of people's hard work.

"The last England player to represent this club was a long time ago and he hadn't come through the system that Saido has come through.

"It will be a proud moment for everybody that works at the academy if he plays for England.

"There are a lot of unsung heroes behind Saido's development."