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The recent Wolves offer of £2.5 million plus Stephen Elliott is still thought to be the highest for a player who has surely played his last game in a claret and blue shirt although there are tabloid suggestions today that they may well have come in with a bigger cash offer.
Lafferty has been headline news all week. It all started with a clear attack on manager Owen Coyle in the Belfast press. This was quickly retracted with some rather strange statements that then led to the fans getting it in the neck from him. Apparently we are boo boys who are forcing him out of Turf Moor but either way he claims to feel unwanted.
Today, Scotland on Sunday writer Mike Wade has been warning him what it might be like for him north of the border should he go up there, and Wade is as baffled as any of us as to how and why this attack on the fans has come about.
He wrote: "For most internet fans, checking out on-line fanzines is still the best way to take a daytime football fix, and apparently the players are at it too. Rangers target Kyle Lafferty is dubbed "Burnley's want-away star" because, according to the Belfast Telegraph, the 20-year-old, "has been left hurt, annoyed and frustrated by criticism … on fans' message boards".
Really? By a strange coincidence I've been checking out the main Burnley fans' site for the past five years and I've never noticed criticism directed at the player, until now. And even if there was, it would be knockabout stuff. Who could take offence at anything written by characters who choose to be known as "professor piehead" or "claretducky"?"
Wade goes on to refer to a situation on a Scottish football message board and then adds: "Will young Lafferty cope with this kind of stuff? He could be a great footballer, but the whinging Irish ingrate had better toughen up before he heads north."