Glenavon manager Stephen McDonnell offers Rory Brown update after goalkeeper was placed on transfer list

The 23-year-old started in Saturday’s 2-0 Premiership defeat to Linfield at Mourneview Park, which came a matter of days after he was placed on the transfer list at his own request.

Brown has made 57 league appearances for Glenavon since arriving from Glentoran in July 2022 having previously enjoyed spells at Ballinamallard United, Institute and Wolverhampton Wanderers’ academy.

He still has three-and-a-half years remaining on his current club contract having since signed an extension on the initial three-year deal he penned with the County Armagh outfit.

"Nobody has rang my phone,” said McDonnell. “As it stands, Rory is a Glenavon goalkeeper for the next three years and until somebody comes in and puts something on the table and has a conversation, it will remain that way.

"That's all I can really say on it. There's no interest there at the minute so we'll see how it goes."

Glenavon were reduced to 10-men early in the first-half after Robbie Garrett was shown a straight red card following his 18th minute challenge on Linfield captain Jamie Mulgrew.

That forced McDonnell into personnel and formational adjustments with Sean Ward replacing Conor McCloskey to allow the hosts to switch into a system with five defenders, and the 31-year-old was delighted with how his squad carried out their instructions under pressure against the league leaders.

"Bringing Wardy on and putting Snods (Matthew Snoddy) into the middle gave us three centre-backs and three midfielders so we gained two centrally,” he added. “The goalposts never move so we had to be strong throughout the spine and we knew we'd have to give up the sides at times.

"We felt that could keep us in the game with the players they had on the pitch playing with two centre-forwards, so we wanted to have a bit more cover in the backline because we knew we wouldn't get to the ball as often as we would like being down the extra player.

"We just felt that if we could strengthen the middle of the team that we could try and defend from crosses and I thought we did it well.

"We got in at half-time only one down which means you're still in the game and I felt they carried out the instructions in terms of restarts, playing for seconds, breaking and transitioning in the final third quite well.

"We limited them to few clear cut chances which is pleasing, but we still lost the game of football."