West Brom football chief Dan Ashworth has revealed the club's new way of talent spotting.

Ashworth explained to the Daily Mail: "We are having to think outside the box for recruitment.

"We could spend hundreds of thousands of pounds flying scouts all over Europe. But we decided that wasn't the best way to utilise the money.

"What we have instead are links to nine or 10 satellite stations, we can tape 30-40 games a week. Linked into that we have a database.

"Effectively that means that anyone we have heard about plays in any of those games, then it clicks onto their name and automatically records DVD footage of them. We have a university intern working with the equipment who will then clip together action of the chosen player. We can concentrate a 90-minute game into seven minutes.

"Over a cup of tea, we can watch a player in three games' worth of footage. The amount of games we have built up is phenomenal. In previous years, someone would say to Tony: 'Here's a player you should look at. We've got a tape of three matches.' That will take him four-and-a-half hours to sit through.

"Instead we can now show him the clips of that player in specific action, for example when he is involved in the play and Tony can get a feel of him. He literally does not have the time to sit through three games. If he wants to see how a player affects a particular game, then he will sit through the whole match.

"Then Tony can say: 'Yes,' or 'No chance, Dan.' Once he's passed the DVD test then one of our staff can go out to take a look at him. Even then it can be a 'No'. But after that there's a final decision. We're filtering them.

"Udinese in Serie A use the same system and in terms of their club, they are a similar size to us."