Dundee boss Neil McCann is determined to take the club to a position of strength where they will be able to fend off predatory bids – no matter how good they are – for his best players.
The Dark Blues lost highly-rated centre-half Jack Hendry just minutes before the transfer window shut on Wednesday night.
Dundee accepted what was a record transfer fee of well over £1 million from Celtic for the defender with the manager acknowledging it was an offer the club just could not refuse.
However, he is now hoping to be given some of that cash injection to strengthen once more in the summer.
McCann said: “I am very disappointed to lose Jack.
“As I said all along, I brought him in here from a position where he hadn’t really been playing at Wigan.
“He came in and enhanced what I wanted to do with my team.
“It worked very well as he is such a talented player and I like him as a lad.
“I am trying to move the club forward.
“So in order to get to a position where I want to be and where I see Dundee being which is challenging regularly in the top six and Europe, winning a trophy, then you need that calibre of player.
“At this stage of where I’m at, I totally understand we are not in the position to knock back that type of financial offer to the club. But I am striving to get to that stage.
“I am hoping I am going to get that money and use some of it come June and I can strengthen again.
“Then it gets to the stage where you are in a position to be able to knock back that type of offer because you are strong.
“That’s my goal but I am really disappointed to lose Jack as he is a super player.”
With the transfer just going through as the transfer window closed for the season, it meant that targets McCann had lined up had to be forgotten about.
The manager did bring in free agent defender Genseric Kusunga yesterday but he was still disappointed he was backed into a corner because of the lateness of the Hendry deal.
He said: “I was always of the mind that Celtic would go right to the last day to use their financial power and really put the club under pressure.
“I was waiting for that to happen. I hoped it wouldn’t but I was ready for it.
“The disappointing thing for me was that it didn’t allow this club to do any business.
“The deal was done right on the stroke of midnight. What chance have I got?
“That’s the disappointing thing for me as don’t think I didn’t have targets.
“I had couple ready that I could have pushed the button on but I didn’t want to lose Jack Hendry.
“If that offer had not been right, we would have kept him.
“I want to make that quite clear. But we are not in a financial position to gamble.
“If we gamble and sign a couple of centre-backs and we don’t lose Jack, then our budget is way out of balance.
“I’m not prepared to do that to this club and I have said that over and over again.
“It left us virtually no time but I have managed to bring one in today who was out of contract Genseric Kusunga who is a centre-half. He is a Swiss national but has played for Angola.
“He will come into the squad for tomorrow.
“When you are left with no time in the window, you have to work out of it.”
As well as Hendry, Dundee also lost on-loan Celtic player Scott Allan who moved to Hibs on Wednesday with Simon Murray heading in the opposite way to Dens.
Eyebrows were raised when Allan left Dens especially as 24 hours earlier he had scored what was the winner against Inverness in the Scottish Cup, producing a man-of-the-match performance.
However, McCann revealed that the midfielder was determined to move back to a club where he had played before.
McCann added: “After the game at Inverness, I learned that Scott wanted to go to Hibs.
“I spoke to him on the phone the next day and he made it clear that he wanted to go to Hibs.
“I told him he wouldn’t go there unless I got somebody I wanted, Simon Murray.
“I am disappointed to lose someone like Scott Allan but if a player doesn’t want to be here, then I don’t want him here.
“There is no point in a player being unhappy because I don’t think you get the best out of them.
“I was surprised after the Inverness game but Scott made it quite clear that he wanted to move to Hibs.”
