Boss Roy Keane says former skipper Jon Walters will never play for the club again as long as he is manager. Walters, who is the subject of a new transfer bid, was stripped of the captaincy yesterday with Keane dropping him from today’s team and disciplining him for his reaction to being given the news.
Keane said: "Jon was due to play and he was in my team on Friday morning, but I spoke to Jon on Friday. I’d been thinking a lot about the captaincy side of things and I just felt that it isn’t right that a player who has a clear desire to leave the club should be captain.
"I thought it was a straightforward one but Jon’s reaction was unbelievably overboard, he’s been disciplined and as long as I’m manager of the football club he’ll never kick a ball for us.
"But we had another offer on Friday night, whether that was a coincidence or not, from a different club. The owner’s negotiating with this other club at the moment. I don’t think you’ll see Jon playing for this club again. We hope a deal can be done quickly, but we’ve heard that one before and until we get the fee we’re happy with it’ll drag on a little bit longer.”
Keane says regardless of yesterday's developments he expected Walters to be on his way this week in any case: "I wouldn’t say it was a ruck, [it was] a disagreement, an exchange of views is a posh way of putting it. I’ve had heated exchanges with many a person, the wife, players, team-mates, managers. I’ve crossed the line a few times myself and you have to take your punishment.
"But I think Jon was going to be leaving next week anyway, no secret there because if his agent is talking to every Tom, Dick and Harry, why should I hide behind anything? If your desire is to leave the club, then you shouldn’t be captain.”
Keane says the new offer isn’t from Stoke or West Brom and hints that it may be from a club from outside the Premier League, with QPR previously reported to have had a £2.5 million offer rebuffed: "There’s been another offer come in, more than Stoke, which I’m glad about because they’ve just been tip-toeing around the situation.
"I’ve said to the owner, if these other clubs, these big Premier League teams, don’t want to come back for him, we’ll sell him to the other team. That’s my opinion but the owner’s obviously negotiating with these other clubs.”
Meanwhile, Keane says he hopes to have three new additions in his squad when Town travel to Crystal Palace next week: "I’m quietly confident that we’ll have three players in.
"There’s one you know and that’s Jason Scotland. We’re trying hard with him and Wigan have made it clear we’ve had a bid accepted. We’re talking at the moment and let’s see what happens.
"We were never going to get it done for the weekend, but we hope Jason might be involved next week."
The proposed swap involving Cardiff's Ross McCormack and Jon Stead appears unlikely to be one of those three moves with that deal moving slowly and other clubs interested in the Town striker. One of the new signings is the young, defensive loanee Keane was targeting at the end of the week, who Celtic manager Neil Lennon has revealed is Darren O'Dea.
The Blues boss was delighted with his side’s performance against Burnley: "Brilliant, good game, good tempo, good spirit, good energy. It lacked quality sometimes from our point of view. I mightn’t look it, but I’m absolutely delighted.
"Physically they looked stronger in terms of height. We had a game on Tuesday, we had an away game last weekend and an unbelievable amount of injuries. Grant picked up a bad one today, it looks a sore one, he may have chipped a bone in his ankle."
Midfielder Leadbitter, who was on crutches after the game, is set for a scan on Monday.
Burnley manager Brian Laws felt he was likely to be more pleased with the result than his former Nottingham Forest team-mate: "I think overall I’m probably the happier of the managers because we got a draw out of it. When you go down to 10 men it’s always tough and to concede in that last period was tough on the players because I thought at times we looked in real control.
"But Roy might say the same. I don’t think either goalkeeper had a lot to do. There was a lot of good interplay but I think the final pass was a bit lacking, which is something that we’ve got to work on and improve.
"The one thing that you have to work with is energy and commitment and certainly the players gave that commitment right until the last moments of the game and I was delighted to get the goal.”