Messy situation of the contracts conundrum

Brechin City boss Mark Wilson has revealed how difficult it will be to resolve the issue of players’ contracts as a result of the coronavirus, writes Ian Roache.

The Glebe Park men are sitting at the bottom of League 2.

Wilson accepts there is no easy answer as the game faces serious peril because of the pandemic and he highlighted just how hard it could become to deal with employment issues.

The former Dundee United and Celtic midfielder said: “The player contract situation is a real problem for me and that’s one of the real stumbling blocks of trying to finish the season off by June 30 (as Uefa has stated).

“I’m looking at it purely from a manager of Brechin point of view but there will be other managers across the leagues who will have similar problems.

“A lot of player contracts expire on June 12. Now that leaves a gap of just over two weeks until the end of June.

“I’ve got four loan players so that’s a problem within itself. They can go back to their parent club. Perhaps their parent club wants to keep them so that loan deal is dead.

“I’m four players down. One of them is out of contract with his club and I know other clubs have been looking to sign this boy next season.

“If they come in and offer him a contract for a year-and-a-half, quite rightly so that player would want to sign that. If I offer him a contract of two weeks to finish the season he is obviously going to reject that.”

Wilson insisted that he would even urge the player to turn him down in those circumstances.

“To be quite honest, I would tell him to reject it,” added Wilson.

“If it’s a contract on offer for two years, or a contract on offer for three weeks to see out the end of the previous season, there’s no way a player would take that.

“Players have to look out for themselves. It’s a short career.

“For players who haven’t got that security for a longer offer elsewhere, maybe they knew that their contract was going to expire at Brechin and that they were going to be let go.

“They are now in a bargaining position and can almost hold the club to ransom.

“They could say: ‘No, I’ll not sign for three weeks but I will sign for six months or a year.’

“Where does that leave the clubs? It leaves you with a squad that was never going to be your squad next year. “It’s just a messy situation throughout. “If a player then signs for three weeks and gets a bad injury, he jeopardises himself next season at a club he had probably planned for. I just can’t see how that will work for all parties.”

Brechin manager Mark Wilson.