New salary cap in Leagues One and Two will thwart loan moves for PNE duo

On Friday, clubs in those divisions voted for a salary cap, the limit being £2.5m in League One and £1.5m in League Two.

The cap covers wages, taxes, bonuses, image rights and agents fees.

PNE were close to doing a deal to send a player on loan to a club in League One and another to a League Two club.

However, the salary cap now means the clubs in question are struggling to fit the players on to their wage bills.

When players go on loan, clubs do a deal over a contribution to wages.

It’s common for the club taking the player on loan to contribute about half the wage, with the parent club continuing to pay the other half.

Both players involved here were understood to be in the first-team squad and not youngsters coming through the system.

Ideally, North End do want to free up some space on their wage bill and also space in the actual squad.

It could be that the clubs who have approached PNE about the loans, eventually create room within their salary cap to allow them to try again.

In terms of activity in the transfer market and on contracts, things should start to pick-up this week.

Alex Neil’s men report back for pre-season training on Thursday, with a build-up of four weeks to the start of the 2020/21 campaign on September 12.

Talks have been held in the last couple of weeks with the agents of all the players who PNE want to offer new contracts to – a number are now in the final year.

Even more pressing is the future of Paul Gallagher who is out of contract – that will need resolving ahead of the return to pre-season training.

His contract ran out at the end of June but he signed a short-term deal to cover to the end of last season.

North End seem confident of getting a number of new contracts over the line, the players being back training likely to focus minds more than when on their holidays.

A statement from Peter Ridsdale put out on the PNE website on Friday night, emphasised the work being done on new contracts and recruitment.

Ridsdale said: “We are acutely aware of the contract situation with all of our players and are in constant discussions with the representatives of the relevant players.

“We will also continue with our policy of trying to strengthen the squad as and when the right players become available.”