Stoke haven't made Maclaren offer: Roar

Dec 29, 2016 - 3:02 AM Coach John Aloisi says Brisbane haven't received a single offer for Jamie Maclaren despite a British report claiming Stoke City have "tabled a bid" for the striker.

Recent conjecture about Maclaren's future took another twist this week when UK website eyefootball.com named the 23-year-old Socceroo as one of three players on Stoke manager Mark Hughes' radar for the January transfer window.

Though the report claims the English Premier League club have been tracking Maclaren for six months, his agent Paddy Dominguez said it was news to him.

And Aloisi denied any formal bid had been made for his off-contract star.

"There haven't been any offers at all for Jamie Maclaren or any other players," Aloisi said.

"We know everyone is going to be talking about Jamie Maclaren and interested in him. There's always speculation.

"He knows as a striker there'll be people talking about him all the time, good or bad."

Contract negotiations have been ongoing since Dominguez described the Roar's initial offer as "disgusting" and "highly disrespectful".

Maclaren has been linked to fellow A-League side Western Sydney, who could stump up marquee money for the competition's highest-scoring Australian player last season.

Europe is another option, but either way Brisbane need to decide whether to gain a lucrative transfer fee in January or keep him for their title push and risk seeing him leave for free.

"Jamie's been focused in his football," Aloisi said.

"Even though he didn't score last week (against Western Sydney) he looked really sharp, and I'm expecting him to cause Sydney FC problems again."

Maclaren, who has six goals from 11 appearances this season and a league-high 23 shots on target, will be a key weapon against the Sky Blues at Allianz Stadium on Friday night.

He's netted three times in his last three games against Graham Arnold's leaders, including a brace in the last trip to Allianz in January.

While Sydney remain undefeated, the third-placed Roar have been beaten just once, and Aloisi reminded Arnold it was his side who snapped the Sky Blues' six-game winning streak in last month's 1-1 draw at Suncorp Stadium.

"We didn't have a good first half against them last time, but we tweaked things at halftime and in the second half we ran all over them," Aloisi said.

"They remember that, they know that.

"We stopped their winning streak, now we believe we can stop their unbeaten run."

Source: AAP