SAM Allardyce today slapped a £7 million valuation on Michael Ricketts - then insisted Wanderers would be committing suicide if they considered selling their top scorer.

On the day Leeds United were tying up the £18 million transfer of Rio Ferdinand from West Ham and Sheffield United striker Marcus Bent was wrapping up his £2.1 million move to Blackburn, the Reebok boss didn't hold back in his assessment of his goal star.

Stressing he had no intention of cashing in on Ricketts, who was snapped up from Walsall in the summer for an initial £250,000, he checked out the market and said: "For me, if Rio Ferdinand - a defender - is worth £18 million, it would be realistic to value Michael - a goalscorer with a strike rate of a goal every 1.2 games - at about £7 million..

"Chelsea are showing an interest in West Ham's Kanoute ... and he doesn't score!"

The exercise was entirely academic and Allardyce sought to assure Wanderers' fans, who have grown accustomed to the club cashing in on its star players, that he is under no pressure to sell and has no intention of doing so.

"We are not in a position of having to sell our major asset," he explained. "We currently don't have anything to spend but we are not financially strapped to be under pressure to sell.

"That would be suicidal unless it was a really ridiculous price we were offered. "

Twenty-one-year-old Ricketts, whose fee will eventually rise to £400,000 depending on his appearances for Wanderers, has scored 12 goals in 18 appearances - six of which have come in games he started on the subs' bench.

He is currently on a five-match scoring streak but it's the variety and quality of his goals as much as the quantity which Allardyce believes makes him such a priceless commodity.

"It's how he scores his goals that will make him into a very valuable player," the manager explained. "He's two footed. He's scored with his left foot, his right foot; he's scored with his head, with shots and flick-ons with every part of his body. There aren't that many strikers around who do that.

"He's only young but, if he continues in that vein, he will be very, very valuable.

"He's a relatively unknown commodity at the moment but I know people will be sitting in the stands watching this young man who is scoring all these goals.

"But I haven't had any offers - and I don't want him."