‘Very good’ offers made to Sunderland trio – Donald

Stewart Donald has confirmed that Sunderland have opened contract talks with a trio of players - and that the club have made them ‘very good’ offers.

Speaking to the Roker Rapport Podcast, Donald confirmed that Lynden Gooch, Josh Maja and Denver Hume have all indicated a desire to stay at the Stadium of Light and have now been offered new deals.

The Black Cats’ chief also confirmed that George Honeyman could be set to trigger a clause in his contract which could see the captain automatically handed a one-year extension to his current deal.

“George Honeyman, if he plays an X amount of games gets an extra year, so I think George is here for next year anyway,” said Donald.

“We’ve begun conversations, lots of them are with the agents to come back to us, and we’d have hoped to have a few of them tied up by now but they are being a little bit slower.

“I think there’ll be news on those players very shortly.

“There’s a lot of talk around the youngsters, which is obviously [Lynden Gooch], [Josh] Maja and Denver [Hume].

“All three of them have indicated that they would like to stay at the club.

“We’ve put offers to them, we feel that they are very good offers.

“The agents are giving us their view of what’s a decent offer. So the haggle is on.”

Such news will no doubt be well-received by Sunderland fans who are keen to see the club tie down their prize assets.

And Donald also revealed that conversations have begun with fellow youngsters Max Stryjek and Elliot Embleton who, while currently away from the club on loan, also see their deals expire this summer.

“We’ve got some others that are out of contract that we’ll talk to but we’re focusing on those youngsters,” he added.

“We’ve got Max [Stryjek] down at Eastleigh that is out [of contract] and we’ve got to do something with him, and Elliot at Grimsby is out [of contract], so we’ve got him as well.

“We know they’re due and we’ve begun conversations.”