Steve Winterburn warned today there will be no improvement in the Withdean pitch when Albion take on the top teams in League One.

The Seagulls' groundsman says there is little he can do about the state of the playing surface.

Boss Dean Wilkins cited the deteriorating pitch as a major factor in Albion's ineffective attacking play in Saturday's goalless draw at home to Rotherham.

It is a familiar story for Winterburn as winter bites. Former manager Mark McGhee even thought about excluding ball-playing French wingers Seb Carole and Alex Frutos from the side last season because of the state of the pitch.

Albion face matches away to fellow strugglers Brentford and Leyton Orient before the next home game against third-placed Nottingham Forest on February 17.

Fourth-placed Bristol City come calling a week later, followed by Scunthorpe on March 17.

Winterburn, the club's fulltime groundsman since 2001, said: "The weather forecast isn't too good for this week.

Temperatures won't be very high so it could be a struggle still until we get into March really.

"If we get a nice, early spring that might help us with the pitch recovering before the end of the season.

"Until then there won't be a vast improvement. There will be certain areas we can look at.

It all depends on temperatures and the grass won't grow much.

"On Saturday it was breaking up on top. It wasn't cutting deep. If anything the pitch can actually dry out too much.

That is why we were watering it before the game.

"It looked pretty bad from the stand and, from the comments that have been made, the players found it difficult to pass the ball at times.

"It is that time a year again and it happens every year with the geography of the site.

"Although every winter is slightly different we are still stuck where we are at the back end of a hill, so there are problems with light during the winter and that starts to affect the growth of the grass.

"The wear and tear builds up and it is not recovering as fast as it would during the warmer months of the year."

Albion could buy a goalscorer for the £120,000 it costs to re-lay an entire pitch and even that, as Birmingham recently discovered, is not necessarily an instant answer.

Unfavourable weather in the West Midlands while St Andrew's was being turfed forced the Championship promotion chasers to postpone a home game against Leeds.

"We haven't got the resources to do what some of the bigger clubs do," Winterburn said. "We all saw the struggle Birmingham had returfing because of the conditions.

"We haven't got the luxury of re-turfing the whole pitch.

We just have to get by and keep working on the surface as much as possible.

"The number of matches played on the pitch has been reduced. Last year there were a lot, it took a real hammering.

"We've been a bit more careful with the amount of games.

Albion Ladies still play on it on Sunday mornings but we have been careful about when they are allowed to play.

"Withdean is an unusual place so it's always going to be a struggle. We look all the time at the techniques we use and products coming onto the market.

"Some of the clubs with big stands have big lighting rigs now, like at Arsenal. They can keep the light levels up really high and then, of course, there is undersoil heating.

"We haven't got that luxury, only covers we can use to protect against frost sometimes before games, so it's a difficult site to work on "If we get a new stadium, of course, then we might look at all of the state-of-the-art technology to help."

Until then Winterburn and his dozen-strong team of full and part-time groundstaff continue to battle against the unique demands of Withdean.

It might sound like overstaffing but most of them are needed just on match days - to move around the athletics equipment.