Steve Cotterill has today formally revealed that eight players will be leaving Turf Moor at the end of their contracts this summer. The players are Mo Camara, Tony Grant, Matt O’Neill, John Oster, Joel Pilkington, Lee Roche, Paul Scott and Jean-Louis Valois.
There really could have been few, if any, surprises there with most of those players expected to leave. The manager himself said at a recent Clarets Trust event that he was disappointed with some of the dealings he had with some of these players so it is clear that he certainly did have it in mind to keep presumably Camara, Oster and Grant.
Grant is the longest serving of those players, he arrived in October 2001 during the heady days of ITV Digital and a naïve belief that it might continue. He is also the only one of the released players to have cost us a transfer fee.
But he, and the others are all now on the lookout for new clubs along with Ryan Townsend who has already been released by the club. We await news of the other youngsters with Joe Booth, Alex Taylor, Michael Hale, Tom Ince, Marc Pugh and Neal Trotman the players who could leave.
When Steve Cotterill arrived he had just eleven full time professionals. Three of them have been sold during the season and another six of them have now been released leaving just
I’m sure we would all wish to offer our thanks to all these players for their contributions whilst at Turf Moor and to offer them our best wishes as they look to continue their careers with other clubs.