Chief executive Simon Clegg says Town plan to offer midfielder Lee Martin a new contract this summer. The 25-year-old, who has said he’s keen to stay with Town and wants his future sorted sooner rather than later, has a year remaining on his current deal.
Clegg says he intends to approach the former Manchester United man with new terms, probably a three-year deal, during the close season: "Certainly, that’s the plan.”
Asked whether Andy Drury or any of the other players whose contracts are up in the summer of 2013 will also be offered new deals, the Town chief says these things are taken care of as a matter of course: "People out there think that suddenly we get to the end of the season and say ‘crikey, look who’s out of contract’.
"We are constantly on top of these things. The fans might not see that we are because quite frankly I don’t want to put it into the public domain who we’re speaking to and when.”
Along with Martin and Drury, Jimmy Bullard, Damien Delaney, Nathan Ellington, Arran Lee-Barrett, Jaime Peters, Ryan Stevenson, Joe Whight and Cormac Burke all have contracts which are up at the end of June 2013, while skipper Carlos Edwards and Luke Hyam recently signed new one-year contracts.
Over the last couple of years the Blues have lost big money signings David Norris (£2 million), Gareth McAuley (£1.1 million) and now Grant Leadbitter (£2.65 million) on Bosman free transfers after they turned down new contracts, a situation manager Paul Jewell says he doesn’t want replicated next summer and will look to sell players who are unwilling to commit to new terms. Norris joined Portsmouth, McAuley West Brom, while Leadbitter is believed to be on his way to Middlesbrough.
Clegg says that the other side of the coin is the significant cost of keeping those players, particularly with the Financial Fair Play rules coming in next season: "You also have to consider the implications of keeping some of those players on in terms of wages.
"There is a significant change to the wage structure and David Norris probably wishes he was still at Ipswich and had accepted the two-year offer he was made, but he was desperate for a three-year offer. Who’s lost out now?”
As for Leadbitter, who revealed his intention to leave the Blues at the end of his contract a week ago, Clegg says there were tentative talks about a new deal last summer: "We had some discussions but the bottom line is that he’s moved on. I’m grateful for the contribution that he’s made to the club.
"As Paul said, he’s a great pro and I’m sure that he will find a contract elsewhere. I’m sure that he has something lined up.”
Clegg points out that the Blues are far from the only Championship club to have seen players leave for free at the end of the contracts in the last couple of seasons: "Whilst people were giving us a hard time about Chuck and Gareth, I think people were quite surprised to see how many players were out of contract and were let out of contract by their clubs last summer. This is becoming much more the norm these days.
"Clubs aren’t committing to the longer term deals they were a few years ago because if it doesn’t work out, you’ve got to pay them off and it costs you a lot of money.”