Albion centre-half Gordon Greer has been retained as captain again this season by manager Sami Hyypia.

Greer has held the armband for the last four years since joining the club from Swindon.

Gus Poyet made him skipper, the Glaswegian kept the job under Oscar Garcia last season and Hyypia told fans at last night’s forum Greer will be his leader as well.

Hyypia, former captain of Liverpool, said: “When I came here obviously I didn’t know the players, so now I have been here a little bit more than five weeks I have a better picture of things.

“I think Gordon is very good as a captain. I think it needs to be a leader-type anyway and he is one of the leaders of the team.

“I encourage the younger players to be leaders on the field as well and probably we will still sign some players who have the mentality and quality to be captain of a club but I guess Gordon will stay captain.”

Meanwhile, chief executive Paul Barber has described as “fairly normal” a drop of seven per cent in Albion season ticket holders at the Amex compared to a year ago.

Barber said: “We are about seven per cent down on this time last year so that is a fairly normal number. When I was at Spurs we would usually bank on an eight to 12 per cent churn in any one year.

“The difference in the Premier League clubs is they have got a huge waiting list of fans to back-fill that churn. People die, get sick, break-up in their marriages, move away, get jobs, it’s a whole plethora of reasons why people don’t renew.

“There’s this sort of notion that just because we didn’t get promoted or sometimes that we didn’t score enough goals people say ‘That’s it I’m throwing in my season ticket and never coming again’. Well they are not real fans if they do that, are they?”