Albion will tell their potential new coach: We are still ambitious.

The Seagulls will keep sights firmly on the top half of the Premier League and hope to challenge for a knockout trophy after the sudden departure of Roberto De Zerbi.

They are keen for fans to believe there is more to come, despite the exit of their popular head coach.

Kieran McKenna at Ipswich Town remains the bookies' favourites to land the Albion job.

Albion have recorded the three best league positions in their history over the last three seasons but say there is no ceiling as they look for a successor to De Zerbi.

Chief executive and deputy chairman Paul Barber said: “We certainly want to keep pushing.

“The vision for the club is to be a top-ten Premier League club and a top-four Women’s Super League club.

“Just because we have had two successive top-ten finishes and now 11th doesn’t mean that has been achieved.

“We still need to keep pushing ourselves to finish in the top half of the table.

“If you do that, you are looking upwards, you are not looking over your shoulder.

“If you are in that bottom quarter of the table, you are looking over your shoulder and it is not a comfortable feeling at all for anyone.

“We want to make sure we keep looking upwards and that means pushing towards that top ten on a regular basis.

“If we do that, it also gives us a chance of competing in domestic cup competitions and going deeper in those competitions.

“We have had two semi-finals in recent years.

“We would like to go at least one stage further and ideally we would love to win one of those.

“These are ambitions and it is important we continue to keep looking forward and to keep pushing ourselves to be better and to make sure the fans don’t believe we have hit a ceiling. There is more to come.