Carlisle United's Paul Simpson targets transfer breakthrough

The Blues boss welcomes his squad back for pre-season training on Wednesday.

And the manager wants to step up the summer recruitment drive as United prepare for life back in League One.

Simpson is targeting a number of players as Carlisle try to build a side to make the step up.

The manager said: “We are working at it every day, and we think we’re close on a couple, but it means nothing until they get here and they’ve signed.

“Until that happens, and we’ve seen this before, there’s still an opportunity for them to go elsewhere.

“That said, I’m hoping to get news on possibly three ahead of Wednesday, but let’s wait and see.

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“There are no guarantees, it might not happen, that’s just the nature of where things are at this stage of the summer.

“I’m also waiting for final responses from the players we offered contracts to at the end of last season.”

The latter comment concerns Morgan Feeney and Omari Patrick, who have yet to confirm where their futures lie.

Feeney has been attracted interest from clubs north of the border.

Simpson needs to strengthen in a range of positions and United’s boss admitted that the recruitment task in general has not been easy so far this summer.

“What I can say is that at the moment it’s a really difficult and tough market,” he said.

“The thing with contracts in England is that player contracts expire on June 30 but, if a player doesn’t have a club, the club he’s about to leave or he’s been released from is financially obligated to pay them until the end of July.

“That’s different in Scotland, where I think player contracts expire on June 9, and they get no pay from anywhere after that date if they’re not fixed up.

“That means that when you’re speaking to players who have been at [English clubs] they know there’s no rush for them, because they’ll still be getting paid.

“They means they can be calm about it all, in some cases perhaps a little bit smug, because they know they can wait a little bit longer. In turn that means we might need to remain patient.”

Simpson said he was not prepared to take a risk by offering Kristian Dennis a longer deal. The striker has since joined Tranmere (Image: Richard Parkes)

Simpson said all United’s dealings would be done with the club’s financial foundations in mind.

He said he had not been prepared to put this at risk with offers he did not feel were right to make, such as a longer deal for last season’s top scorer Kristian Dennis.

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“I know there were some eyebrows raised when Kris Dennis went to Tranmere, but everything there was done properly,” Simpson said. “We made him a very good offer, but it was performance-related for a second year on the deal with us.

“He’s at a stage of his career where you can’t guarantee how many games he’ll play, and I didn’t want to have a player on a good contract who wasn’t playing.

“This isn’t about Denno, we offered him a deal because we wanted him to stay, but we don’t want to weight the club down with financial burdens, and that means we’ll always do things in a way that we feel benefits the club.

“We’ll continue to do it that way, we’ll keep doing the work with that at the forefront of our minds, and if it means we have to work that little bit harder, that’s what we’ll do.

“I’m a big believer that hard work doesn’t kill you, if anything it makes you stronger and better.”