Albion chairman Tony Bloom has defended the club’s player recruitment.

But he has admitted time constraints made due diligence “less perfect” when Sami Hyypia was first appointed as manager.

The Seagulls finished fourth in the Championship under Gus Poyet two seasons ago and sixth under Oscar Garcia last season.

They are 20th under Hyypia more than a third of the way through the current campaign, leaving many supporters pointing to a gradual decline in the squad over the last 18 months.

Bloom says in the second part of an exclusive interview inside today’s Argus: “I think it’s a natural thing to say when we finished fourth 18 months ago and we are at the wrong end of the table now.

“It has obviously been difficult to replace Leo Ulloa, he was a fantastic player. Liam Bridcutt was desperate to leave and when you have got a player who is doing very well it’s not always easy, whatever you spend, to replace them exactly, but we have brought in a bigger squad, a stronger squad in terms of depth, and I don’t think we’re too far off the squad or the team of 18 months ago.

“I have every confidence in the squad of players we have. We’ve got a lot of injuries, we are getting most of them back, hopefully within a month, and I think that will be a huge boost.

“It is really unfortunate for Andrew Crofts and my heart goes out to him.

“It’s another horrific injury but, all things being equal, we’ll have almost all of our players back at the end of November and I am confident we will have much better results in the next 30 games.”

Hyypia’s first press conference in mid-June was followed immediately by detailed discussions with head of football David Burke about the state of the squad.

Bloom said: “He’s very much involved in the whole (recruitment) process. Obviously, when he first came in and there was a delay of getting players in between him signing, we as a recruitment team have to understand what sort of players he wants, which is a little bit different to what the previous manager wanted.

“So we have to go through everything, he has to watch a lot of games. He knows a lot of the players anyway but not as much as he does now. So absolutely Sami will not bring in players unless he is really satisfied.

“When you bring in a manager in the middle of the summer the process may be more rushed than it would normally be, so perhaps in that situation the due diligience may be less perfect, but you have a finite time.”

Don't miss part two of our interview with Tony Bloom - in The Argus today