New manager Chris Hutchings is to be handed a record transfer kitty of £7million to strengthen the Bradford City playing squad.

Hutchings received the good news at a meeting with chairman Geoffrey Richmond just hours after he was confirmed as successor to Paul Jewell on a two-year contract.

City's 42-year-old manager began his new job this morning and was immediately identifying potential new players.

And the club are also going to set up a network of foreign scouts to improve their recruitment from overseas following the failure of recent high-profile loan deals involving Bruno Rodriguez and Jorge Cadete.

Richmond said: "The club will have a record fund available for transfers as we seek to build a team which will ensure we remain a part of the Premiership. It is important for us to identify the players we want and start to make the enquiries necessary to see if they are available.

"Chris clearly has people in mind but we haven't had the chance to discuss specific targets yet."

And Richmond confidently predicts the club's record £1.4million transfer fee for David Wetherall from Leeds last year will be 'smashed to smithereens' on more than one occasion.

"One of the reasons why we were anxious to get the right man as our manager was to ensure that we got on with the very important business of bringing in new players," said Richmond.

Richmond says that despite their experiences with Rodriguez and Cadete they will monitor the foreign market with a great thoroughness.

"We have probably relied too much on the word of agents in the past," he said. "It is time therefore for us to put a scouting network in place on the continent which is similar to the one we have back here.

"We will be employing people, not necessarily full time, who will live in other countries to highlight potential targets and provide us with accurate reports on their abilities.

"We cannot continue to rely on agents. We have to gather our own scouting reports and react to them appropriately."

Hutchings was asked about possible transfer targets at the news conference which heralded his appointment yesterday but shrugged aside the question, saying: "You wouldn't expect me to tell you about them here, would you?"

Hutchings' priority is expected to be to bring in some younger players to bolster his ageing squad.

Richmond was also playing a straight bat to potential targets: "It is up to the manager to select the players we want," he said. "We have a strict policy at this club of not talking about potential transfer deals."

Hutchings has cancelled a weekend trip to Lithuania to watch the Intertoto Cup first round clash between FK Atlantas and the Turkish side Kocaelispor.

City are due to meet the winners away next weekend, but Hutchings believes it is far more important for him to be at Valley Parade on Monday when most of the first team squad report back for training.