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A hi-tech unmanned submarine will be used to scour the seabed off the Channel Islands for wreckage of the plane that was carrying the footballer Emiliano Sala as part of a family-led operation funded by fellow players and well-wishers, The Guardian said. 

The expert leading the search said they would use the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to comb an area of around 25 square nautical miles and they believed there was a good chance of finding the plane, which vanished on Monday last week en route from Nantes in France to Cardiff.

David Mearns, a specialist in finding shipwrecks, said that if the plane’s wreckage was located, the next step would be to try to recover it. He said Sala’s family was determined to establish what happened to the Argentinian footballer.

Details of the private search were revealed as the Cardiff City manager, Neil Warnock, said he has questioned his own future at the club following the disappearance of the plane.

“You think 24 hours a day about whether to carry on,” Warnock said. “It’s impossible to sleep. I’ve been in football management for 40 years and it’s been by far the most difficult week in my career, by an absolute mile.”

Warnock said he believed he had been a passenger of the pilot who was lost along with Sala, Dave Ibbotson, from Lincolnshire. He said: “I’d been to Nantes a couple of times and I do think I had that pilot, who I thought was a fabulous pilot. So I just can’t comprehend it.”

The manager revealed that he had invited Sala to watch Cardiff’s Premier League game at Newcastle on Saturday 19 January, but Sala chose to return to France to gather his belongings and say farewell to his Nantes team-mates before his first training session at Cardiff last Tuesday.

“From my point of view, I have thought many a time: ‘Should I have insisted he came up to Newcastle?”’ Warnock said. The manager had said Sala told him: “‘I’ll score you the goals” and the manager had replied: “I know you will.”

The official search, which was led by the Guernsey harbourmaster, Capt David Barker, was terminated last Thursday.

Pleas for the official search to resume have come from the 28-year-old player’s family, the Argentinian footballers Lionel Messi, Diego Maradona and Sergio Agüero, and the country’s president, Mauricio Macri.