No Contract Offers! We Have No Cash!

By: Bill Osborne
Date: 17/05/2002

GRIMSBY Town chairman Peter Furneaux announced today that the club's out-of-contract players could face a six-week wait before there is any chance of making them offers!

He told the Grimsby Telegraph of the problem and said that the seven out-of-contract players will have to wait until their current deals run out unless a new TV deal can be agreed before then.

Only Boulding and Ford have had an offer but the rest will have to wait. Danny Butterfield, Bradley Allen and Wayne Burnett want to stay and Paul Groves is anxious to hold onto former Manchester City winger Terry Cooke. But Mick Jeffrey seems certain to follow David Smith out of Blundell Park.

Furneaux says the club cannot afford to make firm offers to players after the loss of £2.5-million from the club's annual income after the collapse of ITV Digital. "If you lose 55 per cent of your income and you can't replace it, you can't talk contracts with anybody." said Furneaux.

"We've sent an offer to Ford and Boulding but they'll just sit on them. They'll want to see what else there is. If we get a new TV deal we'll do the best we can but everyone knows we can't compete with the big clubs."

"If the deal isn't done by the end of June, when the players' contracts run out, the total wage bill will have to be adjusted. But we can't do anything until that is sorted out. All the players are sitting on very, very good contracts and they have to realise that the money is not going to be there."

"We will make offers we can afford. We can't enter into a bidding war with no money."

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