Seagulls have high calibre candidates to choose from

Strange as it seems, with the club firmly stuck in the Championship relegation zone and four points adrift of safety, the calibre of candidates will be even higher than when Hyypia was appointed in the summer.

Tim Sherwood, sacked by Spurs in May the day after Oscar Garcia quit the Seagulls, would have been eyeing another Premier League opportunity at that stage.

Tony Pulis, meanwhile, was still three months away from walking out of Crystal Palace.

Look at the Premier League table now and there are very few potential vacancies on the horizon.

Leicester? Perhaps. West Brom? Maybe a bit further down the line.

There comes a point when an out of work manager cannot wait much longer to get back to work.

A Championship club with considerable potential, where expectation levels have been deflated following consecutive top six finishes and the only way currently is up, could just appeal to the likes of Sherwood and Pulis and still to Chris Hughton, who the Argus understands was close to landing the post when Hyypia was chosen.

Of course, all sorts of other factors will come into play – budget, player recruitment structure, style of football and management to name just a few – but there will be plenty of options for Bloom and his boardroom colleagues as they launch into the process of drawing up a long list which turns into a shortlist.

The difference, compared with the summer, is the clock. Time is ticking in the season – Reading’s visit to the Amex on Boxing Day marks the halfway point – and the chance for much-needed squad strengthening looms large.

Chief executive Paul Barber said: “There is an urgency for two reasons. Obviously one the position we are in the league, which isn’t good enough and needs to improve quickly, and second we’ve got the transfer window just around the corner.

“So this is our opportunity to re-inforce the squad where we can. It’s never easy to do business in the January window but if there are possibilities to do that then we will look to do that. “The harsh reality of football is as soon as you accept a resignation you have to move on. Sami more than anyone will understand that, because he has seen it many times in his career.

“As soon as the resignation was handed in and we accepted it we started the process of putting together our list of potential candidates.

“A number of people have already written in, phoned in, texted in, as they always do.

“What we now have to do is narrow that list to a small group of people we’d like to meet and we will aim to meet those as quickly as we can.

“I think it would be wrong to put a timescale on it, because the most important thing is to get the right person, particularly given the situation we are in.

“But clearly we don’t want uncertainty for very long, because that doesn’t help either, particularly with the transfer window just around the corner.”

Albion go to Fulham for their final fixture of 2014, three days after the Reading game. If the new man is not in place by then he is sure to be either before or after the FA Cup third round trip to Brentford on January 3.

The timing is doubly difficult. Purely a fire-fighter for the overriding priority of retaining Championship status, then re-assessing in the summer, or somebody with the bigger picture in mind as well?

Albion are keeping their options open. Barber said: “It’s going to come down to the candidates. There is an expectation that every out of work manager will want every job.

“It doesn’t quite work like that, unfortunately, because they have their own targets of where they want to be. Once we have narrowed down the list and got the candidates in front of us we will know pretty quickly whether it’s a long-term appointment or an appointment to move us forward to the next stage.

“The priority, clearly, is to ensure we stay in the Championship and spark a second half revival that can push us up the table.

“It’s unfair to put any pressure on anyone to set targets but clearly we want to stay, as a minimum, in the Championship and there’s no question about that.

“We didn’t expect to find ourselves in this position. We don’t like being in this position. It hurts and we want to get out of it as quickly as we can.

“I don’t think you would ever attract a good candidate by saying ‘We only want you for six months’. What you have to do is match aspirations. Once you have got that list in front of you then you can see where you think you can get to.

“The most important thing is we go into it with an open mind. Because of the situation in the last few weeks we’ve had to start formulating thoughts. We haven’t just started.

“Already there have been six or seven enquiries from people who I wouldn’t necessarily have had on the list to start with.

“The way we work is to draw together a long list on certain criteria, narrow it down and then we interview a limited number of people.

“That process then takes in quite a lot of due diligence around the candidates, so we talk to people they’ve worked with, people they’ve coached, players, journalists usually give us a view. We try to build as complete a picture as possible to minimise the risk of appointing somebody we don’t know.

“Everybody assumes when you appoint somebody it is going to be successful and, of course, you hope it is, but it’s like appointing any other manager in any other business – there is always going to be a degree of risk. You can’t predict how everything is going to mesh together.

“We will do our best to minimise that risk and look to get the right person for the situation we are in and hopefully for the future as well.”

The appointment of Hyypia has backfired badly, so there will be an element of navel-gazing as well. “I think when you are in the bottom three and you have lost a manager halfway through the season you have to have a good look at everything you’ve done as a football club,” Barber acknowledged.

“That’s the right thing to do and, of course, there are always things you can do better. I don’t think anyone in the club would say Sami could have worked any harder than he did or be any more committed or cared any more than he did but we’re obviously very disappointed to find ourselves in the situation we are in.

“We now have to pull together as a club, work harder, make the right decisions for the club going forward and we need the supporters behind us on Boxing Day to start that process sooner rather than later.”