Terry Burton: West Brom have transfer hitlist

Burton says the Baggies' transfer shortlist had been completed before he took over on June 1.

And he says his appointment to his new role will not change the plans for building a new Baggies squad for next season.

Albion have already snapped up Craig Gardner from Sunderland and Joleon Lescott from Manchester City on free transfers and are preparing to bid for Monaco striker Riviere, who has impressed Hawthorns scouts with his displays in France.

Burton said: "I came in on June 1 so any work on recruitment, really and truthfully, had been done already.

"Due diligence has been done by recruiters who were out there identifying players nine, 10 or 11 months ago that eventually should come to the top of the pyramid, where we get a group of players who ideally should be good enough to come and play in our first team.

"Then we have all the added things about whether we can get them, do they want to come here and can we afford them? But all the work has really been done.

"I have been in with the recruiters every day to try to bring together the information that's out there, because I can't retrospectively watch them now apart from on a video.

"You can see most games now but all you're seeing is the clip that everybody sees."

"You can't watch what his positioning is when the ball is over the other side of the pitch.

"I am never going to put my hand up for somebody having only watched him on TV, but you have trust your recruiters and people like Richard Garlick, Stuart White, Tony Spearing, Jeff Baskerville and Johnny Gibson have worked extremely hard to get us to where we are today.

"Now we are just trying to break that down to see whether they fit the head coach's requirements and I can cast my eye onto it and see if I think they could do a good job for us.

"It's a team effort to try to get the best players in."