David Burke has confirmed Albion turned down offers for star players in January.

The Seagulls’ head of football operations believes they have underlined their commitment to push for the Premier League, despite eight-figure financial losses.

Albion showed a deficit of £14.7million last season and need to reduce that to £8million this term.

Click here to read more on what the losses mean for the running of the club. 

They say that can be done without trimming head coach Oscar Garcia’s playing budget.

Albion sold Liam Bridcutt, Ashley Barnes and Adam El-Abd last month but Burke said all three wanted to leave and more could have gone.

He told The Argus today: “The good thing about our squad is we have got players who are attractive to other clubs, especially Premier League clubs.

“They look at us all the time, they look at the way we play. They want to strengthen their squads and if we were a selling club we could have sold seven players, easily, and probably been in profit at the end of the year.

“But we are not. It was all about Oscar deciding where we could let a player go and we wouldn’t be weaker and Paul (Barber, chief executive) and the chairman and myself getting the right price for those players we let go."