Birmingham City face another test of their resolve to retain Chris Hughton after he emerged as a leading candidate to succeed Paul Lambert at Norwich City.

Hughton has been approached by one managerless Premier League club, West Bromwich Albion, but their interest has cooled due to alternative options, such as the former Schalke manager Ralf Rangnick and Birmingham's demand for £2m in compensation.

The Birmingham vice-president, Peter Pannu, has insisted the club want to keep Hughton despite their financial problems but that stance will be tested again should Norwich, as expected, make a formal approach for the former Newcastle manager.

Norwich lost Lambert to Aston Villa last week and their former manager wants his assistant Ian Culverhouse and head of football operations, Gary Karsa, to follow him to Villa Park. David McNally, the chief executive at Carrow Road, has insisted Norwich will conduct a "European search" for a manager with "top-league experience", although not necessarily in the Premier League, and Hughton is under consideration at this early stage.

Swansea City are a third Premier League club seeking a new manager following the departure of Brendan Rodgers to Liverpool and their chairman, Huw Jenkins, has refused to deny claims of an offer to the Blackpool manager, Ian Holloway. Graeme Jones, the assistant manager to Roberto Martínez at Wigan Athletic, declined an approach from Swansea last week but Jenkins insisted Jones remains in contention for the vacancy at the Liberty Stadium.

"The link with Graeme Jones is one of those stories that got out there but that was just about me quickly weighing up where we were," the Swansea chairman said. "The stories did not come from me or from Graeme and I won't scratch anyone off the list."

Gus Poyet, Marcel Desailly and Michael Laudrup, who has not been approached, according to his agent, have also been linked with the Swansea job and Jenkins admits progress has been made on a short-list. He said: "Only certain people will suit our remit. There are lots and lots of people who come forward at this stage in the process telling you how they want to help you but what's important is that we think things through and go about things quietly ourselves.

"The fact that we know exactly what we want for our club helps a lot. There are probably hundreds of people out there who think they can do the job but there are only a few good ones. We will only speak to a limited few, and we are very quickly getting to the point of seeing what's right for us."