Levein: Walker was let down

New Hearts manager Craig Levein has taken a thinly veiled swipe at Rangers over their failed summer pursuit of Jamie Walker.

Hearts rejected several pre-season bids from Rangers for the midfielder and the clubs did not come close to an agreement during transfer deadline day talks last week.

The 24-year-old has rejected an offer to extend his deal at Tynecastle and could sign a pre-contract at Ibrox in January, but

Levein feels the wide player has been let down.

Levein, who moved back into management just before the transfer window shut, said: “I don’t want to go into too much detail but if I was Jamie I’d be a little bit disappointed that a lot of the promises that were made to him weren’t kept. And not from our club.”

Walker was left out of matchday squads by both Ian Cathro and caretaker boss Jon Daly amid a perceived lack of focus, before returning to the team ahead of the international break.

But Levein has not felt the need to talk to Walker about his situation since the deadline passed.

“I have just been watching training and he has been excellent,” said Levein. “I haven’t had a conversation with him. He has trained fantastically well since the beginning of the week. For me, Jamie Walker is another player. If he does work on the training ground, he will play.”

Rangers manager Pedro Caixinha was unwilling to be drawn into a response to Levein’s comments.

“I’m not going into that situation,” said the Portuguese coach. “Jamie is not with us, I need to respect this. So I don’t want to talk about players from other teams.”

Asked if he was disappointed to miss out on Walker, Caixinha replied: “It’s not about disappointment. We all know what we want. The club has a common strategy. Now that (director of football) Mark Allen is here, we are working closely with him. We are very happy. The squad is complete.”

Caixinha did confirm he was aware of efforts to push the Walker deal over the line on transfer deadline day by via a partexchange deal, Jason Holt and David Bates among the Rangers players linked with such a move.

“That situation didn’t pass through me,” he said. “I know how the things went in that direction, but they didn’t pass through me directly.”

Rangers could revive their interest in Walker in the January transfer window when they would be able to offer the player a pre-contract agreement.