Window Shutting Gossip

Steve Cotterill was none to pleased on Friday night when a late bid came in from Fulham who yet again seem unable to leave young Kyle Lafferty alone.

Fulham boss, Lawrie Sanchez is of course no stranger to the talents of striker, Kyle Lafferty. During his time as the Northern Ireland manager, Sanchez selected him umpteen times to play for the National team.

The bid this time was reported to be £3 million but yet again the Clarets have turned the bid down and held onto the player.

The pressure is now over until at least the January window and our club are certainly sticking to their guns on this one having turned down both Celtic and now Fulham a number of times.

The previous offers were understood to be in the £0.5-£2 million region and quite a few Clarets fans were surprised that an offer of £3m was still not enough to tempt the club to sell and indeed some thought that we should have sold him for that kind of money. His value can only go up in price though and what a refreshing change not to have to sell players purely due to financial hardship.

Next to cause the Clarets fans to sweat was the news that we might also be saying goodbye to James O'Connor. This gossip filtered down the grapevine during Friday on deadline day.

There was apparant interest from two Championship clubs, Leicester City and Stoke City.

It appears that former Leicester manager Martin Allen was prepared to make an offer for the midfielder before being given the recent push after falling out with Mandaric.

The transfer window also appeared to close too early for Stoke gaffer, Tony Pulis after he attempted to bring back the former Stoke player to the Britannia Stadium for a reported £150,000.

Ginge was not even named on the bench for the Saturday match at Colchester fuelling speculation he may have gone to Stoke with no formal announcement yet made.

All seems to have died a death though with Jimmy still a Claret!

So the transfer window deadline came and went with no further activity for the Clarets either in or out.

The gaffer however did intimate there was another player he was interested in, a player that would not be affected by the transfer window deadline. It sounded like he was hopeful of a signing though before Saturday but lets hope he still has this iron in the fire and that hes talking about a midfielder. In order to sign a player now after the deadline that player will have to be a loan or out-of-contract. The latter possibility continues to fuel more speculation that maybe we have still not given up on Eric Djemba-Djemba

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