Gardner-Hickman loan to new environment helps both parties – West Brom's Carlos Corberan

The 21-year-old midfielder was this week allowed to exit on loan to Championship rivals Bristol City, who have a £1.3million option to buy the academy graduate next summer.

Head coach Corberan insisted he cannot guarantee minutes to any players at The Hawthorns and Gardner-Hickman, who has been at the club since he was seven, has found starts hard to come by under the Spaniard.

The Baggies boss insisted he does not see Gardner-Hickman as a right-back, but as a central midfielder who can perform in an attacking midfield role – but said young players require regular game time to progress their skills.

Corberan said: “The fact you say that he is an academy player, with a lot of support from the crowd, or with a positive view, I think our fans deserve an understanding of the situation and I want to give the best explanation for this. For me, first of all, I want to wish him the best because Taylor is a lovely guy. I enjoyed working with him a lot.

“In the careers of young, academy players, there is one point where the strengths are not going to appear unless something changes.

“He’s a player who has a lot of strengths but he still has things to develop. He is a player with talent, with good skills. He was playing minutes with me, with Steve (Bruce), even before then too, but there comes a point when this needs to change.

“He needs to fill the gap of things to improve, to be an important player in the Championship right now, but for this some players have the patience to keep things like this – to keep training and working hard, and to use the opportunities when they arrive. You never know in football when they arrive.

“Or, if you don’t make this movement, the player will have a tolerance to the situation that is not going to allow him to show the strength he has. At some point, the player wanted to leave and we cannot guarantee him minutes here – we cannot to anyone, that’d be unfair for the players.

“What we can do, the way to lead the dressing room, is by meritocracy. When you deserve, and when the opportunity appears, you will have it.

“If you analyse the games, he was playing the first game at Blackburn. He played from the beginning in the cup game, he came on at Leeds. That isn’t a player who isn’t in my plans.

“You can say that he didn’t play in any league games in the first XI – that was my decision.”

“I think that players need to see more possibilities to play to keep developing. In these circumstances, we have five midfielders – if I’d given him more minutes in the last year, maybe we don’t see the level of (Jayson) Molumby. At some point, you need to see what is the player who is more ready in that moment.

“My first couple of games I started with Gardner-Hickman – it doesn’t mean that the player is not ready. Gardner-Hickman is someone with a lot of skills, but also some things that haven’t been developed yet.

“In some point the best option for the player to develop is to go somewhere where they can guarantee minutes. If Bristol is that club that can, he now has what he needs. With no doubt, he needs minutes.

“Being in one position and coming in from the bench is not the way to develop. At some point, the player needs the loan.”

Corberan added that the move to loan out Gardner-Hickman, where the Ashton Gate club will pay a percentage of his wages, also made financial sense as Albion try to balance the books for the head coach to recruit new additions in the next week.

The boss viewed his squad as settled in midfield, with Jayson Molumby and Okay Yokuslu supplemented by Alex Mowatt and Nathaniel Chalobah, so the move to allow Gardner-Hickman out will allow wages to be spent elsewhere.

He added: “For us, to cover another of the needs we have, a midfielder wasn’t a need because we have five midfielders and we only play with two. You need to consider the demands of the market, the needs of minutes and to cover financially another position we need to cover.

“I communicated to the club in the needs in different positions and if you cannot afford these needs then financially you must raise that money from another position – for example, the midfield.

“That’s why we have made the decision – to allow him to develop and to allow us to go for another player that we need more because we have less players.”