At least five Tynecastle players interesting other clubs

VALDAS Ivanauskas, the head coach of Hearts, admitted for the first time last night that the club were "in negotiations" to sell players. Ivanauskas did not name which players were the subjects of those negotiations, but he did mention five who have attracted interest.

"We have been approached during the transfer window by a number of clubs and agents for some of our players," Ivanauskas told Hearts news. "Julien Brellier, Craig Gordon, Michal Pospisil, Paul Hartley and Robbie Neilson are all attracting interest.
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"We are now in negotiations with some of these clubs but any offer must be proper and in accordance with the true value of the player. We expect that there will be further interest in these players from clubs between now and the end of the transfer window given that we are talking about some of the best players in this country."

The interest is no surprise - Gordon was recently the subject of a £2.5million bid from Fulham, and both Old Firm clubs are known to be interested in Hartley. What was surprising, however, was the decision to go public with the information about negotiations on the eve of today's match against Rangers. Some Hearts sources have regularly complained in recent years about the alleged pro-Old Firm bias in the media. In particular, they have claimed that stories are run in the press in the days before a match against Rangers or Celtic which have a specific aim of destabilising Hearts.

Earlier yesterday, for instance, Craig Gordon said the reaction to last week's incident involving Andrius Velicka and Darren Barr was an example of that. Barr was sent off after appearing to clash with the Hearts striker, who went to ground, but that decision was yesterday commuted to a yellow card by the SFA after referee Steve Conroy reviewed it.

"I have since viewed the incident on video and I accept that the decision to send the player off was wrong," Conroy said. "Not only was there no contact, there was no attempt at contact. But the aggressive actions of the Falkirk player were certainly worthy of a caution."

Velicka was widely condemned for his role in Barr's sending-off, but Gordon claimed the striker had been treated harshly. "Other people are saying that Hearts are a team that dive about the place, but I think it's a bit of gamesmanship," the club captain said. "If you've got a lot of that in the media, the referees are going to be aware of it.

"I'm sure they read the papers, they listen to the news, they see what's going on. If they've got that in the back of their mind going out to referee a team they think are going to be diving, then that's going to be in their head. I think that's possibly what other people are trying to do to us."

Gordon added that he thought it wrong for Hearts to be singled out for such criticism, as every club in every country had players who would take advantage of contact situations to gain decisions in favour of their team. "Every single week in the SPL, players from every country - even Scottish players - go down very easily to win free-kicks and to win an advantage."

Taken from the Scotsman