Part of the process of closing down United’s promotion winning 2022/23 season were the offers of new deals made to out-of-contract players Taylor Charters, Kris Dennis, Morgan Feeney, and Omari Patrick, with a deadline for a response set for Wednesday evening just gone.
Speaking about those offers to the official website tonight, manager Paul Simpson said: “The good news is that Taylor has agreed everything verbally.
“He’s currently away on holiday so he’ll be in to get it all signed up once he’s back in Cumbria, which is how we tend to do these things in these situations.
“I am delighted with that because he’s done really well when he’s been fit and available for us. I think he’s a young player with real promise about him, and hopefully that’s exactly what he’ll show through pre-season and into the challenge of the level above next season.”
“Obviously we all know that Denno has signed for Tranmere,” he added. “I have to say, he was very good in the way he handled it.
“He’d been talking to me a lot about it and it was never about money, or him not wanting to be at the club, it was purely the term of the contract.
“He wanted two years, I wanted the second year to be performance related, and that’s pretty much how I look at contracts for any player of that age.
“I did it with Joe Garner and Paul Huntington, they have appearance related clauses as well, so it’s something that isn’t unusual at all.
“Denno wanted that guarantee of two years and I told him that as far as I’m concerned the club comes first. It’s nothing personal, it’s about getting the right deal, and I will always do what I believe is right for the club.
“We were really honest with each other, which is all you can ask for, and he phoned before he signed for Tranmere to let me know that they’d offered a two-year contract, and that was the reason for him taking that offer.
“He wanted me to know that he’d really enjoyed his time with us but the offer from Tranmere gave him the security he was looking for, which is all fair enough.”
Explaining the situation with defender Morgan Feeney and Omari Patrick, he commented: “We’ve been speaking to Morgan since this time last year about contracts, and at that point he told us he wanted to wait because he wanted to see if he could get the opportunity to test himself at a higher level.
“That’s fine, you expect that when you talk to certain players. We’ve obviously now been promoted to League One and we made him a very generous offer, which included all the aspects he wanted to include in terms of his contract.
“Morgan has told me that there’s been some interest from other clubs and he wants to see if anything comes from those enquiries. That means he hasn’t been able to commit to us.
“Again, we’re in a situation where we need to know where we stand as a club, and that means we have to move on and continue to look at the other options we had in mind should something like this happen.”
"With Omari, we've spoken tonight, and we've clarified that he still has time to make a decision, which we're all comfortable with."
And he confirmed his thinking on the reasons for setting deadlines.
“The deadline is set because we have to look after the club,” he explained. “We fully understand that players like to weigh their own options up, and that’s fine, that’s part and parcel of the game.
“What we can’t do is allow ourselves to wait indefinitely for that to be completed. All we can do is accept that the deadline has passed, or talk further, and act as if the door is closed on particular deals if that's what we deem is necessary.
“The fact is that if a player indicates that he’s waiting to see what his best options are, and won’t accept the offer you’ve made, it can leave you in a really difficult situation if you just sit back and wait for too long.
“With that in mind we have to sometimes say that it most likely won’t happen, so we’ll look at other routes ourselves. That’s football, it’s the nature of the game.
“Now, if they were to get back in touch it could be that we do talk, but the conversations from both sides might be slightly different than what they would have been yesterday or today.
“To sum it up, with Morgan we are now looking at other players for that role. With these offers you never say the door is shut, we’ve seen that ourselves here at Carlisle United in the past, but it certainly isn’t open there at the moment.”
June is always a frustrating month for the fans as they watch the rumour mill trundle out all kinds of stories, and he admitted that it’s exactly the same for him and his recruitment team.
“It would be fantastic if you could click your fingers and it was all done, but that’s never the case,” he said. “There’s a lot of conversations to be had and work to be done, and I can assure everyone that we’re on with it.
“We have a lot of things that we’re looking into and following up with, but there’s certainly no sense of needing to rush things. As soon as we’re there with something we’ll let everyone know.
“It’s still very early and clubs and players are saying that they want to see what’s out there. It’s interesting, as ever it’s proving to be a challenge, and that’s even more the case with the division we’re going up to.”
“Players who are capable of playing in League One have huge expectations financially and we’re having to deal with those expectations,” he continued.
“We have to be patient, we have to keep doing what we know is right, and hope that we get those players we’re interested and talking to over the line.
“The good thing is that there have been no enquires at all for any of our contracted players. The truth is our season ended in such a way that we’re not that far off getting back together again for the next one, so we’re already at the point where we’re pulling our squad together.
“That means we want to keep those players we have under contract, so hopefully we won’t be getting any enquiries about any of them any time soon.
“We’re doing all we can to assemble a competitive squad to build on the momentum gained in our play-off final win.
“We’ll continue to do this until the squad is ready for what we feel is going to be a wonderful season ahead.”
