LEEANN DEMPSTER, the Hibernian chief executive, insists the club will not sell striker Jason Cummings in either this transfer window or the next, stating that “sometimes in football it can’t be about the money”.
The striker, who has scored six times this season, was the subject of a £1.7m bid from Peterborough earlier this month that Hibs rejected.
With the window open until midnight tomorrow, there was a feeling that the Easter Road club could yet be vulnerable to an additional late approach but Dempster categorically insisted that the Scotland under-21 player would not be leaving, with Hibs determined to get back to the top flight at the third attempt.
“We turned that bid down because we want to get promoted this year,” she said as she helped launch Hibs “Persevered” Scottish Cup trophy tour. “Jason is an integral part of the team. It says a lot for our club to be able to hold on to some of the strongest and best young talent in Scotland. I’m not worried about the transfer window closing because we are in control of that. We don’t need to be worried about a last-minute offer.
“Do we expect to get to midnight on Wednesday with our squad intact? Absolutely. Football is a strange game and you can never absolutely say never in this game. But I am saying never on this occasion.
“Nothing is happening in this transfer window and we have no intention for anything to happen [with Cummings] in the January one either. Our eyes are firmly focused on getting to the end of the season.
“The club has run a Premiership operation for the last two years because once you scale back it’s harder to go back the way. It’s much easier to scale down than it is to scale up, but we decided right from the get-go we were not going to do that.
“Sometimes there are points in life and in football where it’s not about money and it can’t be about money.
“We want to get promoted and selling one of Scotland’s best talents, the club’s highest goalscorer last season and someone who has continued in the same vein this season, doesn’t show the ambition we want to show. We have 3,500 more season ticket holders than we had this time last year so that is a help financially. Fans have bought their tickets, paid their money up front and that has put us in good shape.”
Instead, Dempster anticipates manager Neil Lennon possibly adding to his squad. “It’s now just about maybe one or two coming in depending on what happens over the next two days. As Neil has said before, it’s about getting the right people in the right positions.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here