Where has it all gone wrong for Saido Berahino?

Having watched on as an unused substitute for the duration of Stoke’s 2-2 draw with Brighton on Monday evening, Saido Berahino saw another 24 hours drift by without a goal. The 24-year-old has now gone 633 days without scoring, frittering away 2,159 minutes of competitive football without finding the net even once.

His current form is a far cry from the heady days of the 2014-15 season, where he scored 20 goals in all competitions for West Brom and earned a reputation as one of the most exciting young strikers in the Premier League.

He even earned a England call-up in November and although he did not make the team, his 47 international caps from Under-16 to Under-21 levels hinted at great things to come.

We all know what happened next: Having attracted the interest of Mauricio Pochettino and Tottenham Hotspur, Berahino was subject to multiple bids over the summer of 2015, all of which were rejected by West Brom and the details of which reportedly infuriated then Baggies chairman Jeremy Peace.

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West Brom stood firm, Spurs saw a late bid fail on deadline day and bitter acrimony ensued, with the club hierarchies falling out big time and Berahino tweeting: “Sad how I can’t say exactly how the club has treated me but I can officially say I will never play [for] Jeremy Peace.”

Pochettino had rated Berahino so highly that – at the height of the frustrated wrangle between the two clubs – he said: “It’s like when you are in love with some lady. There are a lot of women around the world, but you want only one.” In the end, Pochettino was left heartbroken. So too was Berahino, but his heartache has proved harder to recover from.

Berahino’s confidence seemed to take a battering from the stalled move to Spurs, as did his motivation. Tony Pulis left him out for several games around the time of the failed negotiations, supposedly disappointed by his attitude in training and worried about the effect his mood might have on his teammates.

Though West Brom were adamant at the time that they were not responsible for stalling Berahino’s development, it’s hard not to see a link between his current struggles and that difficult spell at the centre of a rancorous financial squabble. Having built up enormous momentum and made 45 appearances across the board in 2014-15, his career took a sharp and unpleasant jolt that summer.

While Berahino was rehabilitated at West Brom, his goalscoring form was never quite recaptured and his appearances gradually declined and dwindled. In November 2016, after reports of him struggling with weight and fitness issues, Berahino issued a statement through West Brom saying: “This last year has been the most difficult of my career and it has left me short of the form and fitness required for the Premier League… that has been where I have found myself and it has hit me hard. It has left me feeling depressed.”

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It was later revealed that, in conjunction with his fitness struggles, Berahino also served an eight-week ban after testing positive for a recreational drug. Speaking about his difficulties at West Brom after joining Stoke in January, he said: “No one protected me at that club. I was depressed. Every morning I walked in the training ground I didn’t want to be there.”

As it has turned out, a move to Stoke has not been the answer to Berahino’s problems. Whether a legacy of his fitness problems or a litany of psychological blows, his goalscoring instinct seems to have been suppressed somewhere along the way. It’s a sad state of affairs for a man who fled violence in Burundi as a child refugee, only to become one of the Premier League’s most coveted footballers. Still only 24, there is time for Berahino to bounce back from his disappointments and misadventures, but as with any career in football the clock is ticking.