Sheffield United need "clarity" from above about contracts, manager admits
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Having been placed under a transfer embargo by the English Football League and subject of takeover talks involving Dozy Mmobuosi and current owner Prince Abdullah bin Musa’ad bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, United are prohibited from extending the agreements of existing squad members without English Football League approval. That is unlikely to be forthcoming until the debts, which prompted the governing body’s sanction, are either settled or rearranged.
With 14 members of his squad either set to become free agents this summer or leave following the expiry of their loans, Paul Heckingbottom does not want to be overwhelmed by administrative matters at a time when, with United second in the Championship table ahead of tomorrow’s game against Watford, he could be preparing for a Premier League campaign.
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Hide Ad“Contracts, I’m trying to get some clarity off the pitch about it,” Heckingbottom said. “We can’t do anything about it now. At the moment, there’s a Plan A all the way down to a Plan Y. Usually, you can think ‘If we’re in this division, we’ll do this and if we’re in that division we’ll do that’ - or find those ones where it works for either. But the situation we are in now, there are very few if any of those situations.”
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Leading goalscorer Oli McBurnie, captain Billy Sharp, Oliver Norwood, John Fleck and Wes Foderingham are among those now in the final stages of their present deals. Heckingbottom, the United manager, is understood to have briefed them on the situation as he waits for Bramall Lane’s board of directors to extricate themselves from the position they have found themselves in with the EFL. It has been further complicated by Mmobuosi’s failure to address the “queries” the EFL have raised about his suitability to seize control of United, who are four points clear of third-placed Middlesbrough.
“I’m not even thinking about it,” Heckingbottom said. “My only aim is to win games. Everything else, that’s someone else’s job.”