Roy Hodgson’s punching back over the ‘Bullard can leave’ stories.
Here’s the full quote from his Friday press conference:
Jimmy is trying to get a contract that suits him. He isn’t sure we can provide that contract so we must be realistic – there are other clubs that can offer that and pay the transfer fee we think he’s worth.
We are waiting to see what happens as he has his own ambitions. He is sitting down with both his agent and our chief-executive, Alistair Mackintosh, but I don’t know if he has had an actual offer. I stick to my original statement that I would be happy if the January transfer window came and went without any transfer activity, and certainly no-one at Fulham has told him he can leave.
Predictably the quote’s buried at the bottom of an article entitled ‘Bullard’s too pricey for Fulham as boss Hodgson admits star may be sold’. Looks like we’ll be hearing a lot more about this one.
Good stuff from Roy. The fact that Bullard and his agent have been talking to the chief exec must be good news and suggests that the club aren’t as resigned to losing him as the Sky report suggests.
Speaking of which I just popped on to their website and they’ve relegated the Bullard story to the fourth story in their football section which might indicate that they don’t think it is such a big piece of news after all.
As other people have said, I think this was just an exceedingly slow news day (although with two European draws you’d have to wonder why).
Bullard wants to stay at FFC, Hodgson wants to keep him here but of course – and especially in the current economic climate – every player has his price. Hopefully, he’ll have a blinder today and the media will have to talk about his performance on the pitch.