Callum Styles is not the kid in the dressing room anymore. At 26, in a revamped West Bromwich Albion squad tilted firmly towards youth, the left-back suddenly finds himself cast as one of the senior figures at The Hawthorns.
Seven of the club’s summer signings are 23 or younger. Around them, the old guard has thinned out. Three players over 30 have gone, joined through the exit door by Karlan Grant and Kristian Bielik, both 28, and 27-year-old Josh Maja. The average age has dropped. Expectations on the ones who remain have not.
Styles knows exactly what that means.
“I think that's natural [to step into leadership] when you've played a lot of games in the Championship and you're getting older season by season,” he told BBC Radio WM, sounding every bit like a player who understands the shift in his responsibilities.
This is not the traditional image of a dressing-room leader. Styles is not 34 with hundreds of league games and a testimonial on the horizon. Yet in a squad deliberately recalibrated towards energy and potential, experience is now measured in Championship minutes rather than birth certificates. On that front, Styles and a handful of others are suddenly the reference points.
“Quite a few of us that were here last year feel like it's our role to then get the new lads adjusted to the league, to the team and to the physicality as quickly as possible,” he said.
That line cuts to the heart of West Brom’s gamble. Injecting youth into a Championship side can transform a season, but only if the transition is handled properly. The division is unforgiving, the tempo relentless, the physical battles constant. Talented youngsters need guides, not just coaches.
Styles sees that responsibility stretching well beyond the white lines.
“We've got to show that through us working hard ourselves and then obviously helping them off the pitch,” he added.
The message is clear: example first, words second. Work-rate, standards, recovery, the everyday details that separate promise from performance. If West Brom’s younger arrivals are to adapt quickly, they will do it in the slipstream of players like Styles, who have already taken the hits and learned the rhythms of the league.
West Brom wanted a younger squad. They have it. Now the question is whether this emerging core, with Styles among its standard-bearers, can turn that youthful edge into something far more serious over a long, punishing season.
