"Sunderland have absolutely no interest in him," he said.

"It has been a busy time for me and, in some ways, I think the January window has come too early for me because I'm still settling in to that side of things.

"But I can give a guarantee that I will never ever bring in a player to this club that I haven't seen.

"That's a big thing to me.

"And I've never seen this lad.

"I think this all comes down to agents trying to get players moves, but he's certainly not someone we've been trying to get in."

Sbragia also insisted that Kenwyne Jones who has been linked with a £5 million switch to Aston Villa, and Michael Chopra, who is a reported target for Hull will not be going anywhere.

But Sbragia said: "I've had no bids for Michael Chopra and Kenwyne Jones – in fact no bids for anyone as things stand."

"When you look at some of these stories, they're hard to take in. Us losing Kenwyne like that would be comparable to Villa losing Ashley Young for a song.

"It's just not going to happen.

"You'd be better off just packing your bags and leaving if you were going to let your top players just walk out of the door for next to nothing.

"If you look at the prices of Dimitar Berbatov going to Manchester United and Jermaine Defoe going to Tottenham Hotspur and the sort of prices they are commanding, well, I certainly wouldn't value Kenwyne at £5m."