Llambias 'We Are A Buying Club'!

"He seemed to have this delusion that he was going to Arsenal or Man United and he's ended up at Wigan.

"What's all that about? It makes you think what are his motives.

"The Shay situation was really difficult for us - he was an icon here, he was like Alan Shearer. We didn't want to lose that. We never wanted to lose him.

"We emphasised that to him. Mike Ashley flew into to see Shay and tried to make him realise how valuable he was to us."

"We want to continue working with Shay on his Macmillan charities.

"We don't want to lose this relationship with Shay and I've made that very clear with the charity.

"It's unfortunate, but what can you do when a player wants to leave?

"It's no good having a player sitting in the stands, what can you do? It doesn't do anybody any good.

"We didn't want to lose James Milner. Realistically, he was only worth £6m according to people on our football side.

"Mike's reasoning was that Villa would never pay £12m. But Villa went on and on and on, it got to 10 and we stuck to 12 because we didn't want to lose him.

"At the end of the day I sat here with Milner and his head was turned, he'd played for Villa before and he wanted to go.

"We are not a selling club. We're a buying club."