Cowdenbeath’s chief executive has hit out at Dundee after the Dark Blues completed the pre-contract signing of their striker Greg Stewart just a few days before the crucial league clash between the two sides.
Alex Anderson has accused the Dens Park club of conducting their business in a “morally” wrong way.
Anderson was disappointed that the deal was completed in the run-up to the weekend match, and that no contact was made with either him or chairman Donald Findlay prior to the agreement being reached.
He now believes manager Jimmy Nicholl and the player himself are in an “awkward” position regarding the match, which will have a huge bearing on Dundee’s promotion aspirations and Cowdenbeath’s survival hopes.
“We’re disappointed in the way Dundee have handled it,“ Anderson told Courier Sport.
“The least they could have done was phone me or Donald Findlay and say ‘we want to speak to your player’.
“We’re now left in the awkward situation where we’re playing Dundee on Saturday and do we play him or don’t we?
“For the boy’s sake, what will the reaction be from our fans if he has a stinker?
“Or if he plays a blinder and scores a goal which helps keep his new team down, what will the reaction be from the Dundee fans?
“We’re very annoyed at the tactics Dundee have used. They should have left it until after the game at the weekend. The first we heard was on Saturday that he had signed.
“Paul Hartley had mentioned to Jimmy that he might be interested but nothing more than that. Jimmy said, ‘well you better get your chairman to speak to my chairman’. That has never happened.
“Technically they have not done anything wrong, because he is over 23. But morally, it hasn’t been right. It’s not the way to do business.”
Cowdenbeath were the first to release the news on the internet, but Anderson claimed that was only because they believed it was inevitable the deal would not be kept quiet through to the weekend.
“We put it out on Twitter because the word was out,” he said.
“The player was talking about it, so we wanted our fans to hear from us first. There’s no way it would have stayed quiet until Saturday once it was out.”
Courier Sport understands that Dundee are happy they made the appropriate contact with Cowdenbeath and that they had hoped to wait until after the match to sign Stewart.
However, they were forced to move when it became clear five other clubs were keen on Stewart, three of which had got to the stage of making him an offer.
The player was keen that his future be sorted, and Dundee did not want to risk losing out. It is also understood they were keen that the pre-contract agreement didn’t leak out this week, and made only a brief statement after Cowdenbeath announced the news first.
Nicholl admitted he hasn’t decided whether to play Stewart at Dens.
He said: “I’ll need to speak to the lad and I’ll have to think about it. I’ve got enough to think about after our performance against Falkirk, which wasn’t acceptable. We have to rectify how we played because it wasn’t good enough.”
Hartley, meanwhile, has stressed the need for concentration to triumph over complacency when Cowdenbeath come calling.
Hartley said: “It’s a really tough game for us. Everyone expects us to beat Cowdenbeath but they have proved recently especially in the last game against us that they are difficult opponents.