Brighton chief Paul Barber issues firm verdict on painful Bruno and Ben Roberts exit after joining Graham Potter at Chelsea

Potter joined Chelsea last week following the sacking of their previous manager Thomas Tuchel.

Assistant Billy Reid also departed along with, first-team coaches Bjorn Hamberg and Bruno, goalkeeping coach Ben Roberts and assistant head of recruitment Kyle Macaulay.

The loss of Bruno and Roberts was an additional blow on top of an already tough situation for Brighton, who in recent months have lost their technical director Dan Ashworth to Newcastle, their player of the year Marc Cucurella to Chelsea, their best player Yves Bissouma to Tottenham and now their entire coaching team.

Under-21 coach Andrew Crofts took the role of Albion’s interim head coach, supported by his assistant Shannon Ruth, set-play coach Nick Stanley, Adam Lallana and assistant goalkeeping coach Jack Stern.

Barber said: “It would be fair to say that we had hoped Bruno and Ben would stay with us, but we understand that when unusual and quite rare opportunities come along, we respect people’s ambition and we respect people’s right to want to further their own careers.

"We’ve got a lot of resilience built into the club already, it’s something we’ve been planning for, for many years in terms of making sure that we have succession plans and structures in place that can withstand sudden changes, because it happens in football as it does in life and here we are.

"We’ve now put in place those contingency plans and we’re now looking to replace Graham and his staff as quickly as we can.

asked if any new manager will bring the enitre backroom team with them, Barber added: “We’re totally openminded at this stage, it’s important that we work through the process and see which candidate emerges at the top of the list and then the next stage of the process is putting the staff in place.”