Town boss Paul Jewell says the Blues have received no bid for skipper Grant Leadbitter and says the club are set to speak to the midfielder regarding a new contract. Chief executive Simon Clegg has revealed that talks have already begun with some of the players who, like Leadbitter, have terms which are up next summer.
Jewell says there has been no offer for Leadbitter, who we linked with Portsmouth earlier in the week, and says that talks regarding a new deal will begin soon: "There has been no bid for Grant and the owner and I are planning to sit down with him next week and offer a new deal.”
In addition to Leadbitter, a number of other players have deals which are up next summer, including Josh Carson, Carlos Edwards, Ronan Murray, Tommy Smith, Colin Healy, Tamás Priskin, Jason Scotland, Ãvar Ingimarsson, Shane O’Connor, Mark Kennedy and Luke Hyam amongst others.
Several of those are unlikely to get new terms and some of the older and younger players are likely to be looked at further along the line.
However, chief executive Simon Clegg says some discussions have already begun: "I don’t want to talk about individuals but some of them have been spoken to and those that haven’t been spoken to, we’ll be getting round to speaking to them as soon as the window closes. There have been discussions between myself and Paul.”
Clegg and Jewell are desperate to avoid the situation which saw the likes of David Norris and Gareth McAuley run their contracts down this summer and admits that the club will do things differently this year, even if there were some benefits as well as the negatives: "It gave Paul Jewell a much freer hand than it might otherwise have done had they been tied into contracts.
"The bottom line is that with the benefit of hindsight it wasn’t an ideal situation, even though it would have tied his hands, but it was a decision that the owner and I reached where we were at at that particular moment in time. It was very much Roy Keane, Marcus and I in terms of making those decisions.
"We didn’t do it then and with the benefit of hindsight, we will be drilling down a little bit deeper with Paul’s involvement on those players who are out of contract at the end of this year.”