St Johnstone manager Steve Lomas has fired a verbal volley at Rangers, claiming the time has come for them to ”put up” in their bid to lure striker Fran Sandaza to Ibrox.
The Perth boss accused the SPL champions of ”unsettling” their player and insisted it would not have happened in the days when David Murray owned the Glasgow giants.
Rangers are known to be admirers of the Spaniard, whose contract is up in the summer, and are understood to want him to sign a pre-contract agreement.
However there has been no offer made to sign him in this transfer window yet and McCoist has indicated he will have to go back to owner Craig Whyte.
The way the saga is panning out has led Lomas to believe that Rangers are looking to take his top scorer west ”on the cheap”.
He said: ”Ally McCoist wants him but I just think that if Rangers are the great club that they are I don’t understand two things why Fran would sign a pre-contract and risk injury.
”Then the contract is worth nothing if he gets injured. If Rangers want him why don’t they do it straight away?
”I feel sorry for Ally because this is his first big job. He is an Ibrox legend and to be fair he is having to deal with all this financial uncertainty.
”Ally wants him and I think he’d go to Rangers. But at the end of the day it’s a case of Rangers unsettling our player they maybe see us as little St Johnstone and they are trying to get him on the cheap. And that is poor.”
He added: ”I phoned him before the window opened and said if you are interested in Fran let’s get it conducted right the way Rangers operated under David Murray, who conducted business in the right way.
”I understand there’s financial implications but, like I said to Ally and he agrees, we’ve got to replace our top goalscorer and doing that would be very hard.”
Lomas added: “As a friend of Fran and not just his manager, and if I’m his agent, I’d say Fran if you’re going to gamble with your fitness to the end of the season why gamble with a pre-contract?
”Because if he gets an injury he ain’t going to pass a medical and that contract would be like toilet paper. You could flush it down the pan.”
Lomas is reported to be assessing three trialists from south of the border. The trio are Kingsley Francis-Reynolds (19), ex-Blackpool; Southampton’s Daniel Day (18), a full-back who came through the Spurs youth system; and Ryan Marriott (23), ex-Chelsea and Arsenal.