Knight insists even relegation would not break Albion

Knight has taken great heart from the club record-breaking performance of the under-18s in the FA Youth Cup.

He was at St James' Park last week to watch the fledgling Seagulls lose a penalty shoot-out to Newcastle in the quarter-finals following wins at home to Chelsea and away to Blackburn.

Knight said: "I am totally optimistic that if we go down - and we are going to battle until it is physically impossible not to stay up - then we'll bounce back very quickly, because we've got so many good young players coming through.

"We've played three Premiership teams at youth level, beaten two of them and should have beaten a third.

That says an awful lot for the future.

"In the meantime we will battle away to stay in the Championship. If we don't we'll be back."

Two of the youth team, defender Joel Lynch and striker Joe Gatting, have already graduated into the first team.

Gatting is currently being used up front with Colin Kazim-Richards as Albion have drawn a blank in their widespread search for a centre forward.

Knight accepts the failure to sign a goalscorer is the reason why the Seagulls are next-to-bottom, five points adrift of safety with just nine games to go.

"I think the team has performed really well, given its limitations," he said.

"You cannot ask for any more effort but we should definitely have got a senior striker in during the January transfer window or earlier in the season.

"We invested some money in Federico Turienzo, who was strongly recommended to us. Sadly the jury is still out on him because he has been injured most of the time.

"Colin Kazim-Richards, particularly recently, has showed he is going to be a very good centre forward and Joe Gatting is going to be a wonderful prospect.

"But last Saturday (at Plymouth) we had Colin and Joe playing together and there's no doubt if you had a senior striker playing alongside either one of them they would come on more. We are asking young players to do men's jobs.

"It's no one's fault. We have to remember we are trying to get better quality players, which means at the minimum we are competing against other clubs in the Championship, and the facilities they can offer are so much better than Withdean.

"There have been examples of players going to other Championship clubs who we were negotiating to bring here.

"It wasn't a question of wages, we could match the wages.

"What we can't do is pay out big transfer fees but it has been mainly the fact they see Brighton are always going to struggle until we have a proper ground."

Knight believes Albion would be in the Championship comfort zone if they still had Adam Virgo.

The Seagulls will not receive the second half of the fee for Virgo from Celtic until the summer but the chairman has revealed half of the money from major outgoing transfers last year was ploughed back into the team.

The other half was used to help keep the club afloat while the financially draining fight to move from Withdean to a new stadium at Falmer continues.

"Fans saying we haven't spent any money on players is nonsense," Knight declared.

"The playing budget has been increased by £750,000 this year from last year, which was roughly half of what we got in transfers.

"People think we got £1.5 million for Adam Virgo and £800,000 for Dan Harding.

We've got about £400,000 for Dan and the rest is based on achievement. In total we got about £1.5 million and that includes Darren Currie and Danny Cullip.

The other half went into running the club.

"We have been playing better football this year but without the finish. If we'd had Adam Virgo we probably would be mid-table, because he would probably have notched up ten goals by now.

"We've made some very good investments and some not so very good ones.

Every club in the land does that, even Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea.

"We've made some very good acqusitions in terms of the two Frenchmen (Seb Carole and Alex Frutos). These guys have played well and they have got acclimatised to English football.

"Jason Dodd was injured early on and we miss Charlie's (Oatway) presence immensely. We've not had a lot of luck this year.

"I am not using that as an excuse. We probably used up all our luck two years ago when we were promoted.

"I don't recall any major injuries that season, we got something like ten penalties and inched our way through the play-offs.

"Maybe in football luck runs in cycles.

"The sadness is that the team has played so well. The quality of the play has sometimes been excellent and deserved more in so many games but the fans want to see results and I can understand their frustrations."

For once, manager Mark McGhee is mulling over a wealth of options for Saturday's visit of Preston.

McGhee has the suspension-free Paul McShane and Adam Hinshelwood available together for only the second time this season.

Gary Hart is also back from a ban, giving McGhee his strongest squad for some time.

The only absentees are Oatway, the hamstrung Turienzo and French goalkeeper Flo Chaigneau, who is still recovering from a knee injury.

McShane has been Albion's rightsided centre half for most of the season, which is also the position the versatile Hinshelwood likes best.

Hinshelwood was used on the right of midfield when he made his comeback from a long-term knee injury at Norwich last month.

He was sent-off in the defeat at Carrow Road, which ruled him out of the next match at home to Watford.

McShane picked up his tenth booking against Watford, so he was suspended for the last two games against Crewe and Plymouth.

Hinshelwood took his place and McGhee must now decide whether to include one or both of them in the side to face Preston.

"You cannot just pick your 11 strongest players, you've got to pick a team, but I'm delighted we have got both of them," McGhee said.

"Hinsh can be used in other places.

We can use him in midfield, as we did at Norwich. I didn't think he did badly considering he was just back.

"Another option would be for McShane not to play, to come back and be on the bench.

"It definitely makes us stronger with Harty and Paul back. We have got to consider how we are going to use them."

Turienzo, Albion's injury-plagued summer signing from Argentina, could be back in contention before the end of the season.

The centre forward is scheduled to resume full training next week after a recurrence of a torn hamstring.

Turienzo initially suffered the injury on his only start for the Seagulls at Luton at Christmas before tearing the hamstring again in training.

Albion have been working on modifying his running action, which they believe is partly to blame for the persistent damage.

Chaigneau is back working with coach John Keeley following several weeks out with a knee ligament injury.

Oatway faces another operation later this month to remove the pins from his broken ankle.

Meanwhile, Preston manager Billy Davies has slammed former skipper Chris Lucketti after he completed a switch to Sheffield United ahead of the Withdean trip.

The 34-year-old has moved to Bramall Lane on loan until the end of the season, when a permanent deal which could eventually be worth in excess of £300,000 to North End will be completed.

Davies said: "When a player makes it very clear to us that he no longer wants to be here and wants to go and play for another team then you can't do a lot about it."