United, though, want to hang on to Gomis and, while Craig accepts every player has his price, the money being talked about is way short in this case.

“First of all, there has to be a bid from someone before we can respond to it,” he said.

“There hasn’t, so we can’t, but one thing I’m happy to tell you is that if Hamilton can sell their best player (James McCarthy) for £1.8 million, there is no way we would consider selling Gomis for under half that.

“You are talking about a player who, right at this moment, I consider to be our best midfielder in terms of consistency and level of performance.

“He’s under contract, we don’t want to sell him and we don’t have to sell, so we don’t need to consider anything at this type of figure.”

One midfielder on the move is Greg Cameron, who this morning started a week-long trial with Notts County, the club who’ve recently been taken over by Arabs and have Sven Goran Eriksson acting as director of football.

Craig believes the decision to allow Cameron to head south shows the strength in depth he has.

“Greg went to Shamrock Rovers on loan to get his fitness up and did very well. He’s also done well since he came back to us in the pre-season, but, like a few others, he has found it hard to break into the team.

“I believe he needs regular first-team football and that’s why we’ve let him go. If things work out well and Notts County want him, we’ll see what can be done.”

Back here, David Goodwillie has pulled out of the Scotland Under-21 training camp this week because of an ankle problem — his place has been taken by team-mate Johnny Russell.

Also not training today were Danny Cadamarteri and Andy Webster, though none of those sidelined are considered doubtful for the SPL opener against Hearts in a week.

Skipper Lee Wilkie was training again with the first-team today and, if that continues to go well, he could get an hour in a bounce game against Dundee later in the week.