Carlos Corberan is set to leave West Brom and become the new manager of Valencia, talkSPORT understands.
The Spanish club sacked Ruben Baraja on Monday after two wins in 17 LaLiga matches.
Valencia have moved quickly to trigger Corberan’s release clause – which is thought to be around £4million.
The 41-year-old Spaniard, who spent his youth career at Valencia, has since agreed to take the job.
It is a huge blow to West Brom in their pursuit of promotion from the Championship to the Premier League.
The Baggies are currently seventh, level on points and goal difference with sixth-place Middlesbrough, having lost just three of 22 league games this season.
West Brom travel to Derby on Boxing Day for a 5.30pm fixture – live on talkSPORT 2.
Ex-Huddersfield boss Corberan rose to prominence as a coach at Leeds under the guidance of Marcelo Bielsa.
He took charge of a desperately struggling West Brom in October 2022 and successfully guided them to safety.
In his second season in charge, the Baggies were in contention for the play-offs until the final week of the season but ultimately finished ninth.
Corberan is now swapping a promotion chase for a relegation battle – with Valencia second from bottom in LaLiga and four points from safety, albeit with a game in hand.
talkSPORT’s European football expert Kevin Hatchard admits Corberan is walking into a difficult job.
“Valencia is a massive club from a massive city, but it’s been in bad health for quite a while,” Hatchard told talkSPORT.
“There’s a lot of anger towards the owner, Peter Lim, who was involved with Salford and Gary Neville and the Class of 92 and all that.
“Of course, Neville was there as manager. That didn’t work out.
And they just have kind of lurched from crisis to crisis.
“Baraja… it’s really sad in a way because this is a guy who was a really important player under Rafa Benitez when Valencia won the league, had success in Europe as well, won the UEFA Cup, and nobody wanted to do better than he did.
“He was desperate to do well for the club. But he’s got a lot of young players there. He’s got a lot of players that have underperformed.
“And it’s very, very difficult with no real spending on transfers to actually get the club to a place where it needs to be.
“Having said that, there probably is potential to actually lift them out of trouble. There probably is something you can do.
“And Baraja had never quite tried everything, but he never quite found the consistency that you need. So I think there is potential there to a certain extent.
“Somebody like Corberan could go in and organise. He’s a very organised coach, isn’t he? He’ll probably set them up, get some results, and get them back into contention. It’s not an easy job.”
