West Brom chairman Jeremy Peace insists he's right to keep a close eye on their spending.
"We try to live within our means and do things in a certain way," Peace told the Birmingham Mail.
"That doesn't mean to say somebody else is doing things incorrectly because they may have a large benefactor and be able to afford things or they may have a strategic reason for doing things.
"If you look at the money going into Manchester City there are people with very deep pockets and how do we compete against that?
"That's why the summer we looked at who else was out there and there was nobody.
"We have to operate in a certain way and that's often to the frustration of the fans but if we did really 'have a go' we might end up three or four divisions down without a club or with a club barely in existence.
"There is a good platform here and if we continue to develop it hopefully we will end up in the right place."