Blackburn Rovers boss Tony Mowbray has said he's not worried about selling in-form striker Ben Brereton-Diaz, who has been linked with the likes of Leeds United and Sevilla previously, but that the right offer from the right club could see him depart.
The 22-year-old has enjoyed a fairytale start to the season and carried the impressive form he showed with Chile in the Copa America in the summer into the first few months of the 2021/22 Championship campaign.
Brereton-Diaz has scored 12 goals in 15 games for Rovers, including a brace in the 2-1 win over Derby County on the weekend.
Football League World exclusively revealed last month that the Ewood Park outfit are set to trigger the 12-month extension in the striker's contract to avoid losing him for free next summer though talks are ongoing about a new deal.
The Chile international was linked with both Leeds and Sevilla in the summer and could be a target of top-flight sides come January given his fast start to the season.
Speaking to Lancashire Live, Mowbray revealed that is not something he is concerned about.
He said: "I'm never worried about selling players.
"What do you think he's worth, £30 million? £40m?
"It doesn't matter to me, we have to coach the players we've got. If a Premier League or La Liga club, somewhere Ben wants to go, comes and offers us the money that we think is right - I'm not saying we're in the market to sell Ben Brereton because we hope to keep him here, he helps us stay near the top end of this league and keeps scoring goals - but he's still only a very young boy.
"I don't sit here and worry about losing any of our players. The frustration has been the reinvestment back into the team. We have just sold a centre forward and there hasn't been much investment yet I understand because of Covid and the financial losses of our ownership through a difficult time.
"As the world sort of comes back to normality, I hope someone down the line if you sell a player, you have a percentage of that money to reinvest into that team to try and find the next player who becomes a big player. That's how you grow a club.
"You have a stable of talent that people are calling about all the time but if you don't reinvest all the time, your club will get weaker and people will moan if you don't win enough games.
"The challenges are how do we want to move the club forward? How do we get to where we want to be? As I keep saying, if you're managing a massive club the expectation is to win every week. You just have to manage the expectation of the club."
The Verdict
You have to credit Mowbray for his honesty here but Blackburn fans may be slightly concerned to hear the manager say that Brereton-Diaz's departure could happen.
Losing the in-form forward would be a massive blow – particularly after star striker Adam Armstrong left in the summer window.
Given he's still just 22 and his contract situation at Blackburn is uncertain, it would not be a surprise to see top flight sides test the North West club's resolve concerning their most valuable asset in the first month of 2021.
Whether that is Leeds or Sevilla remains to be seen but you feel it's a situation to keep an eye on ahead of the January window.