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The search for the wreckage of the plane that disappeared while carrying footballer Emiliano Sala has been narrowed to four square nautical miles in the English Channel.

The Piper Malibu aircraft disappeared from radars close to the Channel Islands on 22 January. Both pilot David Ibbotson and the Argentinian footballer are missing, presumed dead.

Sala had just completed a £15m transfer to the Premier League, joining Cardiff City from French club Nantes.

Search teams based in Guernsey and Alderney worked tirelessly to try and find the plane in the hours and days after the crash but were hampered by poor weather conditions.

Last week, seat cushions believed to have been from the wreckage of the plane washed up on the coast of Normandy.

Now two search vessels are resuming the search and have narrowed the suspected crash site to a zone that measures just four square nautical miles - it lies 24 miles (38.6km) north of Guernsey towards the French coast.

The official Air Accident Investigation Board (AAIB) search team will work with a crowdfunded vessel using specialist sonar and robotic equipment to scour the seabed.

Shipwreck hunter David Mearns is leading the private search and told Sky News: "We will be running lines in a grid pattern, we call it mowing the lawn, just like you mow the lawn to make sure the grass is cut, we do the same thing so we have 100% coverage of the seabed.

"Once we locate any wreckage then we go into the next phase of identifying it visually with a robotic vehicle... that will be to define and identify the wreckage."

The privately funded team would then pull back and allow the official AAIB vessel to oversee the recovery.

The teams will be working in tandem examining the seabed in the zone that is anywhere between 60m (197ft) and 120m (394ft) from the surface. Part of the area includes the Hurd Deep - an underwater valley where munitions were dumped after the two world wars.

Mr Mearns said they were cautiously optimistic: "If it was summertime it would be straightforward but there's a lot of complications.

"I don't want to give people false hope, there's never a guarantee with a search, particularly in this area where wreckage can actually move. We saw earlier this morning there were seven French trawlers in that area with scallop dredgers on the seabed.

"Hopefully, they haven't disturbed anything beyond anything like that and we have a very good chance of finding this."

The private search team will set off from Guernsey for the search zone at first light on Sunday. They expect to spend several days at sea.