West Bromwich Albion hope to keep hold of 15-year-old Jonathan Leko

Exclusive: Manchester City, Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham among clubs monitoring striker's progress

West Bromwich Albion are fighting to keep a 15-year-old academy player out of the predatory clutches of the elite Premier League clubs.

Jonathan Leko, a striker who is already a regular in the Albion Under-21 team, is under constant surveillance by major Premier League clubs, including Manchester City, Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur. Albion’s academy is rated as one of the best in the country but they have lost a succession of players to bigger clubs, including Isaiah Brown, who joined Chelsea a year ago, and Yan Dhanda and Jerome Sinclair, who both went to Liverpool.

Chelsea agreed an undisclosed fee before the Brown case went to a tribunal, while Liverpool only had to pay £209,000 each for Dhanda and Sinclair to cover “development costs”. Albion’s chairman, Jeremy Peace, is so angry about the system he has threatened to shut down the academy, saying: “Why are we spending £2.5 million a year to be other clubs’ academy? It’s irritating. Perhaps £2.5 million would be better spent on bringing in a new player every year.”

Albion are now determined to hang on to Leko, who arrived in England aged eight after his father was granted asylum after fleeing the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo. He has represented England at Under-16 level and Albion hope to persuade him to stay with the promise of plenty of first-team football.They will use the way the club have developed Saido Berahino, now a first-team regular having started at the academy, to convince Leko his future lies with them.