Alan Irvine is fine with West Brom's policies
West Brom boss Alan Irvine is happy with the club's management structure despite admitting signing players he has not watched "goes against the grain."
The head coach has seen eight new players arrive at the Hawthorns this summer but, with the Scot appointed after the end of last season, he has not seen many of them play in the flesh.
Record £10m signing Brown Ideye is one of the men Irvine has watched only on DVDs.
The Scot said: "It's extremely difficult because it goes against the grain straight away.
"I'm someone who would always like to watch players before they come in but we have a different system here.
"My title is head coach, not manager, so that's more of a foreign approach.
"I came on perfectly comfortable with that system and it doesn't mean I'm not involved in decisions on whether we sign players or whether we let players go.
"But it's not the same involvement you might have as a manager, when you'd be driving them every step of the way.
"It is a collective decision and in some ways it does take a bit of pressure off, and what it does do is allow me to spend more time working with the players who are here.
"That's really important because you can be so involved with the players that aren't here, trying to bring players in and sort out contracts, that you take your eye off the ball with what's important on the training ground with the players you've actually got.
"It helps as far as that's concerned because I'm not spending as much of my time looking for players.
"We have a technical director and we have a recruitment department and that's worked extremely well at the club on many occasions.
"The club are keen to continue with that model and I'm happy to go along with that.
"It would help if I got the chance to go and see players, without a doubt, but with the timing of when I came in there was no chance of seeing the players in any case so all I could do was look at videos.
"They were players who were identified before I came in and they were on the system and you have to trust the people who have been doing this job for quite a long time."
