Personally I feel he's a bottler who can't take the pressure, so family was a good excuse. Well documented that he was paranoid of getting injured all the time.
The amount of pressure and focus on our non scoring strikers at the moment may have been too much for him, hence taking the easy option at West Brom. Even if he fails there, he won't be blamed that much. Here he'd be slaughtered by press, fans etc because he's Daniel Sturridge and we're a magnet for bad press.