'There have been battles': Scott Parker shares frustration with Burnley players wanting to leave

The Clarets are primed for a hectic end to the summer window, which finally shuts at 11pm tomorrow.

Wout Weghorst’s departure earlier today made it 19 exits since the end of last summer, with 15 of those leaving permanently.

Many of those deals involved key first-team players, with the likes of Arijanet Muric, Dara O’Shea, Charlie Taylor, Sander Berge and Wilson Odobert all moving on.

The speculation doesn’t seem to end though, with several high-profile names – such as Vitinho and Zeki Amdouni – continuing to be linked elsewhere.

Speaking this morning ahead of this weekend’s derby against Blackburn Rovers, Parker appeared to vent some frustration with how some players, and their representatives, are going about things this summer.

While Parker was a player, he would often be the man to go and see the manager himself if he wanted to move on. But that’s not necessarily the case anymore.

“It’s very different now,” Parker said. “Of course players express in certain moments if they won’t want to be here but of course, it’s very different.

“At the end of the day there’s different dynamics to it as well. While a player may want to leave, there’s a valuation on that player as well. It’s not as simple as a player just wanting to leave the club.

“You can express a view that you want to leave a club but ultimately the club holds a value on you. It’s not as easy as that, there’s two parts to this moving piece. Of course, at times, there have been battles with that.

“There’s a lot more voices around now. Professional footballers have a lot more advice, some good advice, some not so good and some decisions people make are sometimes not correct, but that’s just general life really.”

Given we’re now entering the final throes of the window, there could well be a situation where a player doesn’t get the move they desire.

When asked if those individuals will be immediately re-integrated back into his team, Parker said: “I suppose it just depends on where the player’s mindset is.

“Every week when you play a football match, there’s one fundamental thing you want and that’s to win the game, so you put your best players on the pitch who are technically the best, but for large parts for me as a manager that can often come secondary to the will to win, the will to play for the football club and to try their utmost to try and get three points for the club and the fans.

“That can depend on where their head space is at. I will go back to it, any player can express a wish to leave a club - and it’s not just happening here, it’s happening everywhere - you can express a desire to leave but there’s also another side to that, which is the football club as well.

“If that price is not met then there’s no deal to be done, it is what it is.”

Burnley take on their fierce rivals on Saturday on the back of two straight defeats, one to Sunderland in the league and the other at the hands of Wolves in the cup.

The main frustration, however, have come away from the pitch, with Parker being left hamstrung by further departures leaving him with minimal squad depth.

Despite the challenges of the last couple of weeks, Parker is opting to remain philosophical.

“It’s not been a stressful week,” he insisted. “There’s been some challenges, of course there have and that’s probably not just this week. There have been some challenges the last couple of weeks.

“But this is the chair you sit in and sometimes football can be like that, it can bring different challenges of course it can.

“But when you’re a team that’s come out of the Premier League and there’s a transfer window that is open, there are different dynamics that you face and certainly we’ve faced quite a few over the last few weeks.”