Ruaidhri Higgins hopeful of negotiating new deals for Derry City's out of contract players

Goalkeeper Brian Maher, skipper Patrick McEleney, midfielder Adam O'Reilly and striker Danny Mullen are amongst several of the current panel whose respective contracts expire at the end of the 2024 campaign.

Higgins isn’t directly involved in ongoing negotiations with all the club's out-of-contract players but is fully aware of their respective situations. And ideally he would like signatures secured before the end of the season.

The City boss doesn't want 'wholesale changes' to the current squad but understands negotiations won't be straightforward given the various 'outside influences'.

"We're obviously speaking to people, that goes without saying but it has to be right for everybody," said the Derry manager.

"We don't want to lose many if any, if we can help it. We know that's easier said than done. But we are happy with the squad and we certainly don't want wholesale changes.

"We have decent numbers already in all areas of the pitch for next year and if we can keep a lot of the ones that are up then we would be delighted. It would mean we would just have to add a couple to freshen it up.

"There's agents involved in these things and outside influences involved more now than ever. So we have to work with everybody and make sure everybody is happy and that's what we're trying to do."

So what's Higgins' gut feeling about these ongoing contract talks? "I don't really want to talk about individuals because they're all equally as important," he said. "Listen I haven't given up hope of keeping them all. Again there's so many different parts to it now that everything has to be right.

"We need to look after ourselves as a club too because there's so many different factors to take into consideration. So we'll see.

"It's an ongoing process. I obviously speak to the club regularly and make them aware of who we'd like to keep and there's not many we'd like to lose that's for sure. Again, I'm not really involved in the negotiations as such. We want them to sign now. We're trying and we're hopeful. This just hasn't started yesterday," he insisted.