St Johnstone manager Tommy Wright insisted no deal had been thrashed out with Rangers for £500,000-rated Michael O’Halloran after omitting the striker for his side’s goalless draw with Hamilton.
After having two Rangers bids rejected by Saints chairman Steve Brown in midweek, former Bolton and Celtic player O’Halloran was left out of the Perth club’s squad which failed to find the net for a fifth successive match.
The reason for not selecting the forward, Wright said, was that he felt the 25-year-old was not “mentally right” amid all the speculation about his future.
And on that subject, Wright also warned Rangers that if they want to come in with a third offer for the player, they will need to pay the asking price.
Wright said: “I didn’t feel Michael was right to play. I didn’t feel he was right mentally from the middle of the week.
“I have to put out the best team I think will get us a result. Where Michael is at the minute it would have been remiss of me not to consider not playing him.
“If I don’t play him there is no point putting him on the bench. The fact Craig Thomson came in and did well proved I made the right decision.
“There is a lot of speculation. Michael and I have a good relationship and it was my decision and solely my decision not to play him based on how I felt he was.
“I just knew by his body language he wasn’t right.”
Regarding Rangers’ interest, Wright added: “It is great he is being linked with Rangers because they are a massive club.
“There has been two bids and both have been knocked back.
“It is simple economics as well. (Rangers manager) Mark Warburton has a business background.
“He knows that if you go into a shop and want to buy something you have to pay the price.
“As far as I’m aware there has not been a third bid so Michael is still our player.
“He is contracted to us for the next 18 months. We are entitled to knock back bids while Rangers are entitled to make bids. Hopefully he will be in for training on Monday and we will get him ready for Celtic on Sunday.”
Saturday’s McDiarmid draw means Saints are now without a victory since the start of December, but Wright feels they should have beaten Hamilton and should have been awarded a late penalty for handball against Accies defender Ziggy Gordon.
He said: “I think we should have got three points. But it is a point closer to where we want to be and we will take the positives out of it.
“We dominated large parts of the game but I don’t know what John Sutton has got to do to score. I thought he had scored but it was hooked off the line and the referee missed a stonewall penalty with Ziggy Gordon’s handball.”
Hamilton manager Martin Canning also felt his side were denied a spot-kick, with Joe Shaughnessy handling a Lucas Tagliapietra effort, but was otherwise happy to have claimed a point.
He was also delighted not to have conceded a goal having shipped 19 goals in six games and crashed out of the cup 4-1 against Annan Athletic.
Canning said: “We know we can do better in terms of clean sheets and we worked on it all week to give ourselves the best chance of winning the game.
“It was a very good away performance but if either team had lost it would have been unfair.
“For us it is a good point at a difficult place.
“Everybody at the club was hurting last week after going out of the cup, from the top to the bottom.
“It wasn’t a nice experience but all you can do is look for a reaction from your players and we got it.”