Fulham ridicule '£10m' valuation of Gordon

VALDAS Ivanauskas insisted yesterday that Craig Gordon is going nowhere during this transfer window. Hearts have yet to confirm officially that they have turned down a £2.5 million bid from Fulham for the Scotland goalkeeper but the Premiership team's manager, Chris Coleman, last night ridiculed the Gorgie club's valuation of Gordon.

"He's a good goalkeeper but apparently the price up there is £10 million, which would mean he is the most expensive Scottish keeper," said Coleman when pressed on Fulham's interest. "He must be made of gold."

Ivanauskas, Hearts' head coach, meanwhile, implied that offers would be rejected wherever they came from. "I think a lot of clubs want our players," Ivanauskas said. "Gordon is one target for them, but he has a contract with Hearts. He's a very important player, he's captain now in the team. He's accepted he must stay at the club. He will stay. In January. He has a contract with Hearts and he [will] stay here."

Intent on recruiting players rather than releasing them, Hearts are continuing negotiations with two midfielders, the Ghanaian Laryea Kingston and Gogita Gogua of Georgia. "Contract details," Ivanauskas said when asked what stage the attempt to sign Kingston was at. "Similar with Gogua."

Despite the size of his squad and his hopes of increasing it, though, Ivanauskas still has injury problems for today's home game against Falkirk. Robbie Neilson is unavailable after a cartilage operation, and his fellow-right-back Nerijus Barasa is also out after being injured in last Sunday's 2-1 defeat by Celtic. Jose Goncalves, Deividas Cesnauskis, Edgaras Jankauskas and Mauricio Pinilla remain on the injury list, too, with Pinilla, the Chilean international striker, apparently intent on returning to his homeland.

"I am tired of the lack of stability and I will find this in Santiago - a team from where I was born," he told La Tercera, a newspaper based in the Chilean capital. "The last few years have been difficult. Luck has never been with me.

"It's vital I move quickly for my psychological health. I need to regain my confidence for my career which has stopped for the past season."

The same newspaper reported that Hearts had tabled a four-year contract for the player, who is on loan from Sporting Lisbon, but an agreement would depend on permission to return to Chile on a specified number of occasions each year.

Pinilla angered the club by leaving on international duty and then getting injured in training; in such circumstances, it seems improbable that an agreement could be reached.

The more immediate problem for Ivanauskas, meanwhile, is raising the spirits of his side after they got nothing out of their last match. "It's [a] very dangerous game psychologically," he said of today's encounter.

"Because after a good performance against Celtic it's very difficult [to get a] similar performance.

"But we're trying, and I hope the players understand the situation now. Our table situation [means] we need three points if we want to go forward. Psychologically it's very important. If we have a good result tomorrow we go to Ibrox [next week] with self-confidence.

"This week was not so much maybe physical training as psychological. We had chances to score the second goal, we created chances, but Celtic are experienced and a clever team and they got the three points. We played very well in the first half, but 45 minutes against Celtic is not good enough."

Arkadiusz Klimek, the Polish striker signed from Kaunas, is not match fit yet, so Roman Bednar and Andrius Velicka should start up front, with Calum Elliot coming off the bench if he passes a fitness test on an ankle damaged in a bounce game against Livingston by a tackle from Landry Poulangoye, a Gabon international.

Taken from the Scotsman