Carlos Corberan refuses to close door on West Brom striker

Grant was surplus to requirements last season despite top-scoring in his second season at the club.

He was sent to south Wales for the season with Championship rivals Cardiff footing a hefty sum of his wages. Albion are still paying instalments to the Terriers for his purchase.

“It’s impossible to close doors on players who are a part of this club,” Corberan responded when asked on Grant’s future. “They still have contracts – Grant has two years more from next summer.

“(Taylor) Gardner-Hickman is a little bit different because Bristol (City) have the option to execute the clause to sign the player permanently. Then you have players like Jamie (Andrews) or Jovan (Malcolm), who are playing in different leagues and they’ll be a part of the club.

“Grant is playing every single minute, and I’m pleased. He’s not been changed. In the last games he hasn’t been a player the coach has been using to change. This is important when they’re playing every single minute – it means the coach believes in him and because he deserves this.

“With Grant I’d say, before he went for the loan, that the way he came to pre-season I was thinking that this is a player who wanted to recover his level and we considered that the best way for him to rediscover his level was to move him from here.

“After, in the summer, in the right moment, we will re-evaluate the situation.”

Grant recently said he had yet to receive contact from Albion while on loan. Corberan explained there is a specific scout watching each of his games and sending the Spaniard reports.

The head coach added that each loan case is different and treated on its own merit. He said a former Premier League player such as Grant is in a different position to youngsters like Ethan Ingram, Mo Faal, Jamie Andrews, Jovan Malcolm or Zac Ashworth, most of whom are on Football League loans for the first time in their careers.

Baggies legend Chris Brunt’s role of loan manager sees him oversee and liaise with any loan players experiencing issues.

“We always follow everything they are doing,” Corberan said. “We have a specific scout at the club who is following every single game. He always sends me a report of the games – not only the players playing in the Championship, but the players in League One and League Two too – we like to see if they are achieving what we can not give to them, that’s playing regularly.

“Right now, the players in the Championship, Grant and Gardner-Hickman, they are playing regularly and that’s very positive news for us, it’s positive for us as a club and in the moments that I can find time to dedicate to look at them in more detail, I share it with the staff because we like to see everything that they are doing.

“We find moments in the year where we can find distributions of the game and we can have a look in detail at them.

“For me, especially the players who have been in the Championship before – or, like Grant, in the Premier League – you cannot treat them like you would the other players, who are having the first loans of their careers.

“With the players that have the experience, part of the journey is to find the best level of them and to find a way for them to play the minutes they need to play, managing the situation they have by themselves because in some moments you cannot show any interruption in the process they are having.”

Corberan spoke with Gardner-Hickman when Albion drew 0-0 at Bristol City’s Ashton Gate and the former was ineligible. Nigel Pearson, who was in charge of the Robins, has since been sacked. Corberan said he will have similar talks with Grant when Albion travel to Cardiff on November 28.

The boss drew parallels to Alex Mowatt and Cedric Kipre loans last season. He said: “You can only make the best decision when you look at them in detail, that’s why we were doing this work with Mowatt and Kipre during the last year.

“In moments of time I was able to focus on them, or with Caleb (Taylor), or with (Tom) Fellows. That’s why we decided to integrate them into the squad this year because we were analysing everything they were doing last year.”