Alan Pardew already has Jonny Evans's replacement in mind as Arsenal and Manchester City circle

The Albion boss has put contingency plans in place but he hopes that if his skipper does leave this month, he goes early in the window to allow the Baggies the best opportunity to spend the money.

Arsenal and City are set to battle it out for Evans this January after both top six clubs enquired about the £30million-rated defender at the weekend.

Evans missed Albion's 2-0 win over Exeter City in the FA Cup third round on Saturday with a sore foot, but Pardew insisted it was a legitimate injury. However, he does have targets in mind should Evans leave.

Speaking on Saturday he said: "As it stands at the moment there is no bid for Jonny, but if a bid comes in that is acceptable to the club we are ready to go and move if we need to.

"It would be naïve not to have that plan in place. Hopefully, if it does happen, it will happen earlier rather than later for us."

Evans was also injured towards the end of the summer transfer window, when there was a three-way tug-of-war for his signature between Arsenal, City, and Leicester.

When Pardew was told that people will put two and two together about his latest knock, he said: "I can understand that, but he is genuinely injured.

"I think Jonny will be ok by Tuesday so I don’t think there's any problem going forward.

"I might not have played him anyway, we’d had a lot of games and I wanted to give Gareth (McAuley) a game and blimey did he reward me. I thought he was man of the match."

McAuley featured for the first time under Pardew, who admitted the 38-year-old could be an important figure in the second half of the season if Evans leaves.

"Absolutely, I think Gareth has been looking at me with puppy eyes asking when am I going to get a chance," he said. "He’s the only senior player I haven’t given a game to, but Ahmed (Hegazi) and Jonny had played very well.

"I think this is our fourth clean sheet, defensively we have been sound, so it has been hard for Gareth, but it still shows his level of professionalism to come in and play like that. I know it was Exeter but it was still a very good performance."