Charlie Austin: The real me is about to step up for West Brom

The 30-year-old joined the Baggies from Southampton in the summer after the two clubs agreed a £4million fee.

Since his move to the West Midlands, though, he has netted just one goal – with that strike coming against Millwall in the League Cup.

Austin will face one of his former sides on Saturday when the Baggies travel to take on QPR at Loftus Road.

And he admits he’d like nothing more than to leave the ground having netted his first league goal of the campaign.

“It’d be nice, of course, to score, but more than anything it will be nice to get off the mark in the league,” Austin told the club's official website.

“I’ve scored 151 goals and nothing’s changed, I know what I’m doing.

“I’ve seen it everywhere, on social media, they’re saying ‘any chance of him scoring?’

“Listen, I back myself every time I go across the white line.

“If I wasn’t getting the chances then I’d be questioning myself, but I’m getting the chances and with the group of players we’ve got now I’m going to get bundles of chances.

“I’m going to get plenty of goals for West Brom this year, there’s no doubt about that.”

Prior to his move to The Hawthorns, Austin endured a frustrating pre-season.

After being told he wasn’t part of Ralph Hasenhuttl’s plans at Southampton, he was told to train with the under-23s along with Jordy Clasie and Mario Lemina.

And he says it is only now he is truly beginning to feel match sharp.

“I feel good,” Austin continued.

“It’s well documented what happened before, I had six weeks with the under-23s doing nothing.

“Ask any top professional, you can do as much as you can, but if you’re not involved with the first team you’re not going to be up to speed.

“Six weeks down the line I feel good, I feel a lot fitter, a lot stronger, I feel I’ve shown that in my last two performances.

“I’ve come on leaps and bounds and now hopefully the Albion fans will see the real me.”

Like Albion, QPR have enjoyed an excellent start to the new season with both teams having collected 16 points from their opening eight Championship games.

Remarkably, Slaven Bilic’s unbeaten side have come from behind in seven of those matches. But Austin wants to see the team beginning matches more aggressively – starting at Loftus Road.

“It’s going to be a tough game,” he added.

“They’re up there on merit, they play some good football. We’re unbeaten, we’re expected to be up there, we’re expected to put in performances that we have done, but we expect performances to be better.

“We don’t want to keep conceding and going behind in games. It’s great character to keep coming back but we need to put that to bed and really start a game off well.

“We need to be on the front foot, I think we need to go there and be on the front foot. We are the away side but we are expected to win.”