Michael Beale has wished Malik Tillman all the best for his PSV Eindhoven career – but only after the Champions League clash with Rangers.
The midfielder will return to Ibrox to face his former club in the first leg of the play-off round showdown just weeks after the end of his time in blue.
Tillman was a standout performer for Beale and Giovanni van Bronckhorst last term and collected the PFA Scotland Young Player of the Year prize.
Rangers were unable to make his switch from Bayern Munich permanent, though, after the Bundesliga giants activated a £1million clause to cancel out the transfer arrangement that was in place.
Tillman has subsequently put pen-to-paper on a switch to Eindhoven and will now get the chance to make his mark back on familiar territory after returning to Glasgow on Monday.
Beale said: "Two things on that. The agreement was in place before I came in terms of how it was structured.
"We stuck to our side of the agreement. Quite frustratingly, Bayern stuck to their side and the did buy-back that they had.
"Malik knows that outside of the games against Rangers that he has got our full support.
"He was fantastic for us. I spoke to him a lot over the summer.
“He is just back from a long-term injury and I think it is a good move for him. We wish him well, outside of these games obviously.
"He is a fantastic young player. I don’t want to go too far into it but the agreement that was there was a number we had to hit and Bayern hit the number straight back.
"They did that, he is their player and that was their prerogative. In a way, it showed the value that Bayern had on him. They have only loaned him out again this year.
"Malik has got a lot of people that like him in football, there were a lot of clubs that called me to ask reference on young Malik.
"He is coming back from a difficult injury and, as I say, after these two games we wish him well."
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