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Decisions on Out-of-Contract Players and Staff Soon - Ipswich Town News

Town’s out-of-contract players and coaching staff will learn whether they will be offered new deals a meetings with boss Roy Keane next couple of weeks. David Wright, Richard Wright and Shane O’Connor are the most prominent players whose deals are up this summer.

Pim Balkestein, Ed Upson, Jack Ainsley, Liam Trotter, Reggie Lambe, Troy Brown, Devann Yao and Ian McLoughlin also see their terms end in the close season, while coaches Ian McParland, Steve Foley and Chris Kiwomya will also be out of contract.

Keane says everyone in that position will know their position once he has met with Marcus Evans: "They’ll probably all know in the next week or two. A lot of these things have to be looked at, not just players, the budget, where we’d like to go with the staff and the gym.

"All these things are on hold until I get a chance to sit down with the owner and get the thumbs up for X amount or whatever it might be.

"That happens at every football club, you take stock and you reflect on what you feel needs improving, particularly for myself after my first year at the club.”

Keane says that ideally he would have preferred to have spoken to some of the younger professionals before now: "We’ll sit down next week and speak to the boys who we feel we want to be part of that young, hungry reserve group next year, along with Luke Hyam, Tom Eastman and the rest from the youth team.

"There’s Reggie Lambe, there’s Jack Ainsley, Ed Upson and a number of other players. We probably didn’t want to leave it this long but the way that the season has panned out, I plan to sit down with these players early next week.”

The Blues boss also hints that the gym at Playford Road could be set for a makeover, the Training Centre already having received extensive attention last summer: "The training ground is now absolutely brilliant when you consider that at the end of last season it was of a poor standard, but I knew that was for financial reasons.

"I’ve had good back-up in terms of changing the training ground and now it’s very, very good, I’ve no complaints, but we’re always looking to improve certain areas of the club.”

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