Boss Paul Jewell says Town will offer new deals to players who have a year left on their current terms to prevent the annual impasse as contracts come to an end. Last year David Norris and Gareth McAuley left on free transfers as their deals came to an end without new terms having been agreed, while the same could happen this year with Grant Leadbitter, who is understood to have been offered a deal by Middlesbrough.
Jewell said: "I don’t want to get into a situation every year where we’re having this conversation. The lads who have got a year to go, if we want to keep them we need to make them offers and if they don’t want to accept, I think we need to sell them. Peterborough have done that with a couple of their players [Paul Taylor and George Boyd].
"At the end of the day I don’t want to get into the situation every season where we’re talking about players’ contracts.
"You’re never going to be able tie everybody down, not everyone’s going to sign, but if Player A has got a year left and we’ve offered him a deal and he wants to keep his options open, maybe we’ll try to sell him and move on. We want to keep the better players we’ve got.”
Jack Ainsley, Jimmy Bullard, Damien Delaney, Andy Drury, Nathan Ellington, Arran Lee-Barrett, Lee Martin, Jaime Peters, Ryan Stevenson, Joe Whight and Cormac Burke all have deals which are up at the end of June 2013, while skipper Carlos Edwards and Luke Hyam both recently signed new one-year contracts.
Despite his lack of involvement in recent weeks — his last start came at Burnley in November — Jewell insists that Bullard, who is currently out ill, is still in his plans: "He’s got another year on his contract. Like every player here, you’re never out of the door.”