Wolves bosses today insisted the club will not shirk from breaking their transfer record for a third year running this summer.

The Molineux outfit smashed their record in signing Kevin Doyle for £6.5m in the summer of 2009 and a year later nudged it up further in landing Stephen Fletcher for £7m.

They are hot in pursuit of Birmingham central defender Roger Johnson this summer – with his eventual price expected to be in that region. “Would we break the transfer record again if we felt it right? Well, we haven’t been shy about doing it before have we?” said a defiant chief executive Jez Moxey today.

Moxey’s claim follows more evidence of Molineux’s growing reputation as one of the Premier League’s prime ‘value for money’ operations in the latest financial survey of the nation’s top flight.

Figures for 2009-10, which saw Mick McCarthy’s squad take their Premier League bow, saw Wolves finish 15th despite running the second-lowest wage bill in the division of £29.8m.

Moxey believes that the season just completed, which was climaxed by their final-day escape from the drop, will have still seen Wolves operating in the bottom three of the pay league.

The figures produced by football finance specialists Deloitte have seen Wolves heralded as one of the best-run operations in the country and gave Moxey and chairman Steve Morgan cause for satisfaction as they attended a two-day meeting of Premier League bigwigs.

“The conclusions are an endorsement of what we have been striving to do since we set off on this course,” said Moxey.

By MARTIN SWAIN