Kean admits Hoilett advantage is with the player

Steve Kean has admitted that the club faces an increasingly difficult situation with contract rebel Junior Hoilett.

Hoilett has been stalling on a new contract for what seems like a generation and has now only got six months left until he can leave the club.

This has left his club with a problem – sell him now for a fee or spend the next five months trying to persuade him that he is best off at Ewood Park and risk losing him for a tribunal fee in the summer.

Either way, Steve Kean (master of positivity and delusions) has admitted the player holds all the cards.

Kean told the BBC – ‘Any player does when it gets down to six months.

‘What we have to do is to continue to be open and honest with Junior and say ‘we want you to stay’.

‘If he would like to commit his future to the club we have always said from day one that we would like to get it tied up.

‘He has probably taken the opportunity to look elsewhere. I don’t know where he is on it. If we can get to a point where he wants to sign then great.

‘If not, if there is a bid that comes in then we would obviously have to consider that, and the fact that he hadn’t signed. But no bids have come in.’

Kean said that the club should have given Hoilett a longer contract than the two-year deal he was awarded in 2010 when Sam Allardyce was Rovers boss.

‘A couple of years ago when we only signed him for two years we should have made that a longer contract,’ added Kean. ‘Everybody would say we should have pushed to make it longer because now when there’s six months left it’s tough for the club.’