Barry Fry says it would be ‘footballing suicide’ to sell Siriki Dembele in the final week of the transfer window

Fry insists Posh have received no bids and no enquiries for the transfer-listed 24 year-old this summer.

But that situation could change as clubs start to reassess their squads ahead of the transfer window closing at 11pm on August 31.

Dembele made a match-winning appearance from the substitutes’ bench in Saturday’s 2-1 win over Derby County.

“The last week of a transfer window is always the most dangerous time,” Fry said.

“Clubs will probably start panicking if the season hasn’t started well and they will be looking to strengthen.

“If we sell Siriki then it would be footballing suicide as we would have no time to get a replacement in. It would be the same if we sold Jonson Clarke-Harris.

“We do already have Joel Randall who is a class player, but he’s only 21 and we bought him for the future as much as the present.

“He will be an exceptional player at Championship level in a couple of years, but Siriki is the finished article now. We have a much better chance of staying up with him than without him.

“The position of the club is we don’t want bids for Siriki. We want him to stay and if he is still here when the transfer window shuts we will do all we can to get him to sign a new contract with us.

“But he is in the last year of his contract and we will have to see what bids we get.

“As of now we haven’t had any and there haven’t even been any enquiries about him. I hope it stays that way.”

Dembele as entered the last year of his Posh contract and could leave the club at the end of the current season for nothing so the club have to weigh the value of his transfer fee against the value of staying in the Championship.

Earlier this summer Fry stated Dembele would be ‘open’ to discussing a new Posh contract if he was still at the Weston Homes Stadium when the transfer window shuts.