two bids rejected

[gazzer, loyal royal]

World Cup pair snub Reading
Reading manager Steve Coppell has revealed club record bids for two World Cup players have been rejected.

The Premiership newcomers, who make their top-flight bow at home to Middlesbrough in eight days, have been thwarted in their bid to sign John Mensah of Ghana and Ivory Coast's Emerse Fae.

Both currently play in France with defender Mensah, 25, at Rennes and midfielder Fae, 22, under contract at Nantes.

Reading were prepared to pay £3.5million for Mensah and a similar sum for Fae. Those sums would have smashed the club's current transfer record, the £1.5million paid to Wolves for Seol Ki-Hyeon but Coppell confirmed neither would be coming to the Madejski Stadium.

He said: "We made an offer and they turned it down. Both clubs said to us it doesn't matter what you offer he is not for sale.

"So in those circumstances you don't keep knocking.

"But it's not too late to sign someone for the first Premiership game, absolutely not. If I felt it was the right man for the right job I would put him straight in."

Trialist Andre Bikey, the 21-year-old Cameroon international, does not fit that category however.

Bikey ruined his chances of a contract by being sent off for violent conduct in a pre-season friendly in Sweden.

A loan move from Lokomotiv Moscow remains a possibility but even of that became a reality Bikey would not go straight into the side.

Coppell said: "With him being sent off for violent conduct I couldn't then go to the chairman and recommend we sign this player. We don't know enough about him.

"He only came away with us for five days and he speaks a different language. We are exploring the possibilities of a loan but we don't know if his club will be comfortable with that or the player himself will be comfortable with that.

"We have made no more than a phone call to see if it is a possibility.

"He does speak some English. I can have a conversation with him and he will understand me but if you are on a football pitch and you are screaming "turn", "man-on" or "far post" he is bewildered.

"Anyone will tell you it takes a couple of weeks to get to know all the footballing expressions so he would drop into that quite quickly. He already speaks four languages so I don't think English would take him too long to learn."

[Avon Royal]

World Cup pair snub Reading

How exactly did they "snub" us if their clubs rejected our bids?

[Rawlie19]

If that is a headline taken from a journalist then it's awful. If it's one you've made up, gazzer, then

[rabidbee]

It was the headline on SportingLife.com, so presumably it was coined by the Press Association hack?