Hearts seek transfer fee as Copil heads home to Romania

"Dumitru Copil has indicated his desire to leave the club and has returned to his home in Romania," a statement on the club's website said. "The player, however, remains under contract until 31 January 2010. Whilst Hearts is (sic] prepared to allow the 18-year-old to leave Edinburgh, given the player's status under contract a transfer fee would be required."

Hearts remain hopeful that they will receive transfer fees for several of their players while the window is open this month, and in the cases of established first-team players they will of course be seeking fees substantially larger than anything they might reasonably expect for Copil.

So far, however, no firm offers have been received for those players such as Laryea Kingston whom they would be happiest to offload. If the next fortnight continue in the same vein before the market comes to life in the last days of the month, Csaba Laszlo will be left with minimal time in which to seek replacements for the departures.

The Hearts manager has a list of targets, with Motherwell striker Chris Porter clearly high on that list, but his aim is to reduce the size of his squad, meaning that new signings are unlikely to outnumber departures.

Laszlo has also been warned he could face a fight to hang onto one of his young players after Eggert Jonsson's agent revealed clubs are weighing up bids for the Icelandic international.

Nottingham Forest manager Billy Davies attended Sunday's Scottish Cup win over Hibs and was said to be checking out the 20-year-old. And the player's representative Olafur Gardarsson said: "I am aware of interest in Eggert but there is a long way from being interested in a player to making a bid. We will just have to wait and see what happens."

Taken from the Scotsman