New Hearts manager Daniel Stendel claims he was always committed to Barnsley despite the club sacking him for negotiating a potential move to a rival English Championship club.
Stendel was released by the Tykes earlier this summer after a poor start to the season but the English outfit have detailed that it was his conduct which resulted in him leaving.
Claims the club made in a statement revealed that the German had breached his contract - an issue the manager is yet to deny.
Hearts are currently in a compensation wrangle with Hearts over Stendel's hiring at Tynecastle.
But now the man himself has provided a comment from his official Facebook page explaining that he wasn't told why he was being sacked on the day he was given his orders.
He said: "During my entire time at Barnsley I gave my full commitment, energy and passion for the club and their supporters.
"I always put the sporting results of Barnsley first and always tried to achieve the very best results that were possible.
"We had a fantastic last season in League 1, securing promotion to the Championship, playing some very entertaining football.
Michael Smith desperate for Daniel Stendel's fresh ideas to catapult Hearts up Premiership table
"The start to this season was very difficult though, with the club being unable to retain several key players from the promotion team and couldn’t replace these experienced players.
"I always remained committed and accepted all the decisions of the Board during my entire time - including the decision to terminate my contract with immediate effect.
"At the day of my dismissal, I wasn't informed about any detailed reasons.
"The week before my dismissal I asked for an open discussion about the sporting situation with a Board Member, during which none of the reasons that apparently led to my dismissal were raised as complaints.
"I was always honest and documented strongly that I wanted to continue to work with the team in order to achieve the goals of the club. I was then dismissed after the disappointing defeat to Preston."
Stendel begins his new job this morning at Hearts after jetting into Edinburgh Airport last night.
And his new club have vowed to stand their ground against Barnsley who are expecting cash as compensation for the German.
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