Hill tells targets to act like pros
KEITH Hill is calling for professionalism from his players as the transfer window speculation starts to build.
Hill expects to lose some of out-of-contract players, already citing Matty Lund and Nathaniel Mendez-Laing as likely departees.
But he’s also aware that some of his contracted players will be attracting attention from elsewhere given their fine performances in the 2015/16 campaign.
“There will be one or two players who will be sought after from other football clubs and I’m expecting a professional response from those players,” said Hill.
“There are a lot of rumours flying around and there always is.
“But it’s my knowledge as a manager that all those rumours and all those agents phoning me on behalf of players I have under contract are just other managers and other football clubs being playful and trying to undermine the continuity and the stability that we have here. At this time of season, any rumours or any talk of transfers are just speculation and bit of skulduggery in trying to pinch players for nothing.
“We’ve done a lot of hard-work to develop these players and develop the core nucleus of players to take into next season and nobody will be taking players from this football club for minimal amounts of money.
“That’s whether it’s an experienced player or a player that we’re developing to become an experience player.
“Most clubs are very clever at this time of year in that they will only pay out what they have to pay out as we have no fans coming through the turnstiles. It’s important your wage bill is kept to a minimum. So any transfer activity, or transfer fees,
‘Nothing ever, ever gets done until late July’
only ever happen towards the end of pre-season and approaching the end of August.
“It’s not very often that somebody picks up the phone at this stage saying ‘we’ll give you £2m for such and such-a-body and we want to take him tomorrow.
“Agents get in touch with managers, manager get in touch with agents, they get in touch with the player and try to undermine the player, the player comes to me and says ‘I’ve been offered this amount of money from this club’ – but that club hasn’t phoned me.
“It happens on a regular basis.
“I’ve been sat here in previous years and had the same conundrums, the same problems that I am facing this season.
“But nothing ever, ever gets done until late July.”