Chris Maduewesi
Member
The 25-year old Nigerian international last week joined West Brom on a club record fee of £10million.
Irvine revealed that he only watched the tapes of Ideye alongside the club's scouts before they moved for the former Ocean Boys player.
However the coach is optimistic that Ideye would go on to replicate the success his Nigerian teammate,Peter Odemwingie had at the club.
“It would be fantastic if he could have the same impact as Peter Odemwingie did.
“I don’t know much about Brown Ideye – I’ve not seen him live, but people we trust have done.
“It’s not necessarily something that is detrimental to me not to have seen him live, though ideally I would like to because that’s how I like to do my work.
“But we’ve done our research on him and what we have done is found decent players in the past in this way.”