Geoff Pitcher is poised for his first home start for Albion against Stoke tomorrow night.

The pint-sized midfielder made an encouraging debut for the fourth-placed Seagulls in Friday night's 2-1 win at Wrexham.

Boss Micky Adams was delighted with the display of his £50,000 summer capture from Kingstonian and believes Pitcher can be Albion's creative force.

"I wanted to give Geoff his chance," said Adams. "He has been working hard in training and reserve matches and he has enough ability in the final third of the pitch to do some damage.

"The one thing we perhaps lack in midfield, without being disrespectful to Melton, Rogers, Oatway and Carpenter, is that little bit of creativity and he's got that."

Adams hopes to have influential central defender Danny Cullip available as Albion bid for an 11th straight League win at Withdean.

Cullip, 25 today, strained a hamstring in the early stages of the Seagulls' last home League game against QPR.

It forced him to miss the Worthington Cup defeat by Southampton and Friday night's triumph at the Racecourse Ground.

"We don't know how much longer it's going to be," said Adams. "We hope he is going to be fit for the Stoke game. What we don't want to do is rush him back and make it any worse.

"It's a blow, because Danny loves the art of defending and if you haven't got that you are looking at people who are defenders but don't relish the physical challenge like he does."

Stoke beat Reading 2-0 at the Britannia Stadium on Saturday to move up to ninth place following the controversial £1.7 million sale of their top scorer Peter Thorne to Cardiff.

Albion were back at Falmer today for training. They switched to Ardingly College more than two months ago because Adams was unhappy with the condition of the pitches at Falmer.