West Brom boss Tony Mowbray has defended the club's wage cap.

He said: "The teams that finish top are generally the ones with the biggest wage bills and the ones who finish bottom are the ones with the lowest wage bills.

"In the Premier League the teams with the lowest wage bills are invariably the teams who have just come up, because the gap between Championship and Premier League salaries is too huge to jump.

"How do you bring established Premier League players into your club?

"You can't afford to unless you blow your wage structure out of the water, which creates problems in your dressing room unless you raise everybody's salary to four, five or six times more than they were on.

"Even then there is no guarantee of success, and that is how you get yourself into trouble. That's what our club doesn't do.

"We are trying to do a job on the salaries we pay, which are a long way short of most Premier League clubs."