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This article is part of Football FanCast's The Chalkboard series, which provides a tactical insight into teams, players, managers, potential signings and more... 

West Brom are unbeaten in four Championship games so far this season with two home draws and two away wins.

Baggies boss Slaven Bilic has mainly deployed his preferred 4-2-3-1 formation so far with eight players starting every game possible.

The two at the base of the midfield are included in that - both summer arrival Romaine Sawyers and Jake Livermore, who has been at the club since 2017.

In pre-season, the Croatian revealed that youngsters Kyle Edwards and Rekeem Harper would be a key part of his plans, he said:

“Young players go up and down, but we need him. We need Rekeem [Harper], we need Kyle Edwards too.”

Yet the former hasn't really had a say on the pitch this term.

A few weeks before those comments, the 19-year-old signed a new contract keeping him at the Hawthorns until 2022 and he also wasn’t loaned out this transfer window.

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Harper played 16 times in the Championship last season but has been restricted to just six minutes in the league, coming on as a substitute on the opening day.

He has since been named on the bench just once meaning he hasn’t even been part of the matchday squad for games against Luton Town or Reading on Wednesday night.

Sawyers and Livermore have impressed as the anchoring duo in midfield with both players averaging a 92.1% and 87% passing success rate respectively, as per WhoScored.

It would be understandable to see why Harper hasn’t been able to break into the starting XI on that basis but it is rather bizarre that the young prospect hasn’t even featured on the bench in the last few games.

It raises question marks over whether or not his development should have been focused elsewhere just like it has with Sam Field and Jonathan Leko, who have both gone on loan to Charlton Athletic.

His progress is at risk of being stalled especially as he doesn’t look to be getting any match experience anytime soon.

It remains to be seen whether there are any underlying concerns such as an injury, especially as he didn’t feature for the U23s at the start of the week - yet summer singing Chris Willock did.

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