Blackpool Chairman Karl Oysten has confirmed that two players being targeted by QPR have release clauses in their contracts.
QPR have been heavily linked with Blackpool’s Latvian centre half Kaspars Gorkss and Irish winger Wes Hoolahan who both impressed against the R’s last season. Rangers are not alone though with Charlton, Norwich, Sheff Utd and others chasing one or both players.
Their impressive performances in Pool’s debut season in the Championship isn’t the only attraction for the so called bigger names of the division – both players have release clauses in their contracts said to be in the region of £250,000. That means two of the league’s outstanding players last season could be bought for around half a million pounds.
This has understandably drawn criticism from Blackpool fans who are keen to know why the clauses were inserted into the contracts in the first place. Chairman Karl Oysten has defended his club saying that if Blackpool are to attract talented players sometimes they have to give into their demands to get them to Bloomfield Road in the first place.
Oysten told the Blackpool Gazette: ““We take a view on each and every case. If not having a clause means that we can't sign a player that we really, really want to sign then I think we've got to take a view that we have a clause that gives them a get-out.
“But we take each case on its own merits and if it's a player we are desperate to sign - though we're obviously desperate to sign any player that Simon [Grayson] identifies and we talk to - then we may have to do it. But I'm not going to say there is any hard and fast rule for anything.
"We try and bring about the result that the manager wants, which is to get the players here that he thinks, and we all think, can keep us in this division and progress us in this division."
Although Rangers have been linked with both players it seems that centre half Gorkss is the most likely to be moving to Loftus Road. The Latvian scored nine goals from the back last season, including one in W12 as Pool launched a come back from three goals down to eventually lose narrowly by three goals to two.
***
Meanwhile Simon Walton has described being left out of Hull’s squad for the play off final as “a kick in the teeth”. Walton, who recently proposed to long term girlfriend and model Nicola Tappenden, spent the second half of last season on loan at the Tigers after breaking his leg in pre-season at QPR. He made just five starts and five sub appearances during his time on Humberside but was expected to be named among the substitutes at Wembley last week only to be left out altogether on the day of the game. Walton, a passionate Leeds United fan, angered sections of the Hull support during his time there by attending Leeds games and being snapped in a Leeds shirt supporting the whites in a league match at Doncaster Rovers.
He will now return to QPR and fight for his place in Iain Dowie’s team – he has made just one start so far for the R’s but Dowie is the man who spent £1m to take him to Charlton as a teenager so the change of manager at Loftus Road could well work in his favour.
Discuss this story on the Message Board
Click here and be the first user to comment on this story