Pre-season is well underway and Micky Mellon is still looking at his options
With pre-season training in full swing the players are getting down the hard work of the pre-season training programme.Manager Micky Mellon is still looking at the options in his squad and would like to bring in a couple more new faces if possible.
Micky has been working under the financial fair play rules that affect the budget available to him. Cameron Gayle moved on earlier in the week and that frees up some more funds to allow him to continue his squad shifting.
Jermaine Grandison, Andy Mangan and Jean-Louis Akpa Akpro’s contracts have now expired and the trio are no longer Shrewsbury Town players.
Micky sat down with the press to go over a number of different subjects and the contract offers was one of the first questions.
“Their contracts are up which means they are no longer our players and they are free to talk to other clubs”, said Micky.
“It’s about timing now and us trying to get some more money into our pot by continuing to do a bit of squad shifting.
“I’m delighted with the squad I have got but would like to bring in a couple more new faces if that’s possible.
“We are not in the position to offer anyone a deal at the moment as we’ve hit that financial ceiling.
“We need to manoeuvre a few things about until we know and bring someone in.”
Micky was pressed as to whether the trio were now out of his thoughts but he hasn’t shut that door just yet:”I’m not going to say anything as we don’t know what’s going to happen and we don’t know what their plans are.
“I don’t want to start doing guess work as at the minute the facts are their contracts are up so they are no longer under our employment
“Until I can do some squad shifting then nothing is going to change on that but they are all good players and I’m sure there will be other clubs coveting them but we will see what happens are the pre-season goes on.”
At present the Town squad has over 23 players who are going though their pre-season programmes. Micky pointed out though that a number of those are development players who will not be ready to go straight into starting a Sky Bet League 1 game:”People have to be careful when we mention a squad of 23 players as we have a number of development players here.
“Players that are not ready for League 1 or players who will have to take part in pre-season and convince us otherwise.
“There are a number of the young players with a lot of development still to do before I can believe they are ready to come into a tough standard such as League 1.
“We are mindful of that development for some players and have planned for that and know how many first team players we have who can step in.”