Fulham manager Kit Symons has defended the club’s decision to tie down wantaway midfielder Bryan Ruiz to a new deal and expects the player to act professionally.
The Costa Rican featured 32 times for the Cottagers last season and was expected to be released when his contract expires in the summer.
However, the Whites took up the option of extending his deal for another year meaning that clubs would need to buy the player rather than allowing him to walk away for free.
A loan move to La Liga outfit Levante was scuppered by red tape in February, and Ruiz has been monitored by a number of Dutch outfit such as PSV Eindhoven.
Palermo and Valencia also looked the possibility of taking the World Cup star last season.
Symons is playing hardball though and is not prepared to take a £10.6million hit on the man who arrived in west London in August 2011 and expects Ruiz to honour his contract.
“The business and the football side need to come together,” he told the club’s website.
“Bryan was an expensive acquisition for us and on a business model we didn’t just want him to walk away for nothing.
“Bryan didn’t want to be here last season and he doesn’t want to be here now, he’s made that clear, but he’s a very good player for this football club and we can’t afford to let people just walk away.
“He’s a professional, he’ll come back here and acquit himself well and be another good player for my squad.”
Meanwhile, Fulham’s chief football officer Mike Rigg is still certain Symons is the man to move the club forward in the long-term and insists new additions to the squad will be identified carefully.
“The club have been through a tough time in the last two or three years and in order to get some stability back in the club I don’t think more change was what we needed right now,” he said.
Bryan Ruiz in pictures
“Behind the scenes, what a lot of the fans won’t see is there’s been a real feel-good factor. To make a knee-jerk reaction would’ve been the wrong move.
“We’re not going to risk the long-term future of the club with any kind of knee-jerk reaction by overpaying hyper-inflated prices of greedy players or agents.
“We want to bring players into the club that have got the ambition and the quality to take us back to the Premier League.
“We’ve not talked about finances or a war chest. We’ve talked about strategy. We’ve got a unified strategy of what we want to do.
“It’s not just about how much we spend, it’s about making sure we have a real calculated behind how we build this squad.”
