"There’s bound to be consternation, you can’t blame fans for that. About three weeks ago, I had a call from his agent saying ‘hypothetically if we got a big bid would you consider it’. I said no, I am building a team around him. About 10 days two weeks later, he asked again and asked if I’d considered it. So I knew something was bubbling beneath the surface.

“As it turns out it was Fulham he had his heart set on. You know how my teams are built, if a player’s heart is not in it, you can’t keep them. If anyone wants to leave my club they always can, and I’m not going to change now.

“I was very disappointed but agents are agents. Unless the player moves they don’t get paid. It’s one of those things, I was very disappointed with the way the agent went about it. I was disappointed to be honest how Bobby played in pre-season.

It came from his agent and that’s how the ball got rolling. I asked him and he said he would prefer to go to Fulham. They are everyone’s favourites to go up, it doesn’t always work like that as we will hopefully prove.”

Neil Warnock