Darren Fletcher: West Brom can grow globally

Darren Fletcher reckons West Brom can grow their international support by becoming the English team of choice in India over the next few years.

The Baggies are sending coaches to Delhi at the moment to help give 50,000 children from around 1,200 schools their first taste of football.

Fletcher said: "Hearing the enthusiasm that young kids and the people of India have for football, they say that they pretty much just support the Premier League rather than a team.

"By us taking part in this initiative hopefully they'll be a little bit more sympathetic to West Brom. We might find ourselves getting a bigger profile in India and a lot more fans.

"It's a global game now, it's a multi-cultural game there's no doubt about that. Obviously, you have your local fans and they're the ones that come into the stadium every week.

"But there's so much more opportunities for the clubs in terms of expansion and generating more money."

Albion's captain has already highlighted the opportunity next season to grow the fan-base in the West Midlands in the wake of Aston Villa's relegation, but he's also used to playing for a club recognised around the globe.

He said: "I've got a lot of experience from Manchester United going to different countries and expanding their fan-base.

"The ultimate dream would be one of the kids to play for West Brom, imagine how good that story would be. I'm sure off the back of this we will get a lot of support.

"Being the only club from the West Midlands in the Premier League, hopefully, we can capitalise on that. I've spoken before about bringing new supporters into the club locally, but this is on a different level."