Ian Ferguson says his push to tie down several of his out of contract Perth Glory stars will step up in the next few weeks as talks progress with multiple key players.
The Glory have already signed Jacob Burns, Billy Mehmet and Josh Risdon to contract extensions in recent weeks but have several other key players nearing the end of their deals.
Australian marquee Mile Sterjovski, in-form attacking midfielder Steven McGarry – who Ferguson confirmed the club had spoken to regarding a new deal – and defenders Josh Mitchell, Steve Pantelidis and Scott Neville are among the players whose deals expire at the end of the Hyundai A-League season.
Ferguson said he expected all of them to be in high demand given the club’s impressive form in the past two months but was confident the club could retain most of them.
“The club is still talking to one or two at the moment and hopefully we’ll try to get another one or two sorted in the coming weeks,” he said.
“The club will be speaking, hopefully next week, to a lot of players and hopefully they’ll have a grasp of where they’re going to be. The club will make offers to people but financial restraints at the moment are going to dictate that.”
“With budgets getting cut and so on we have to be careful, we can’t just rush in and sign all these players and give a lot of players what they want, we’ve got to take our time and make sure the budget will work out so we can take on as many players as possible.”
“We’re trying to keep the best nucleus of the squad that we can and hopefully add three or four young ones by the start of next season.”
The coach, who is out of contract himself but planning to be at the club beyond 2011/12, said he was wary of the contract situation disrupting the harmony of the squad but that the players had maintained an excellent attitude.
Ferguson said the players had done a good job of maintaining focus on Saturday’s crucial home match against Newcastle Jets, where the fourth-placed Glory will be trying to bounce back from their 2-1 loss to Sydney a week earlier.
But they’ll be without star striker Shane Smeltz, who has had a blood injection to fix a nagging ankle injury.
“He needs to get this injection and once he gets it he needs to get four days rest and he should be okay for next week,” Ferguson said.
Mitchell and Todd Howarth are expected to return to National Youth League action this week, while Neville was likely to do the same in the following round, Ferguson said.
