Still believes speculation may have affected Cullen’s form

Cullen, 24, who has scored 11 goals for Hatters, lost his place in the team recently, not starting a league game since the turn of the year.

Still admitted that the striker’s dip in form may have come about because his focus was elsewhere, although confirmed he has never directly asked to leave.

The boss said: “It’s fair to say there’s been a little bit of speculation about people being interested in Mark Cullen and I think that Mark would agree he just lost a little bit of form.

“He’s had a rest now, the transfer window has come and gone, so nothing has happened in that direction. There was interest and I’m a funny person, players either want to be here or they don’t.

“But Mark has never spoken or expressed interest to leave, although whether or not that was on his mind, we don’t know.

“Whether or not he was even aware of it, we don’t know, but it can affect young men.

“To be fair to Mark, he never once knocked on the door and asked if there was interest, he just got on with it.

“But we just felt he lost a little bit of form and whether that was a reason for it, I’d understand if it was because they’re big things.

“We felt he came on against Cheltenham, he missed a couple of chances, but he got in for those chances. He came on at Oxford and I thought looked very sharp, he looked like Mark Cullen when he came on the other night, so that’s a fortunate situation we find ourselves in.

“I think we’ve seen the Mark Cullen we know in the last couple of times he’s come on and the other night he took his goals brilliantly.”

Still also confirmed that despite the interest, he had never been looking to offload the former Hull forward, who signed a new three year deal in the summer.

The boss added: “No, from our point of view, Mark was never made available and still hasn’t made been made available.

“When people ask the question about Mark, he’s not available. Now we cant stop people enquiring, can’t stop people making bids, but I think it’s important we stress that, from Mark’s point of view, we never heard anything.

“But news is news, people are going to find out. Whether he thought, it something going to happen and the club haven’t spoken to me, well, in our situation there nothing to talk about because we didn’t court offers.

“We never looked for that, we want to keep our best players and as it stands today, I think Mark’s almost one in two this year in goals and in fairness was playing when we had have difficulties with attacking players.

“So I think his contribution has been absolutely phenomenal, I really do. Lets hope now that all that dies down and we see the Mark Cullen that we saw earlier in the season and the Mark Cullen we saw the other night.”