St Mirren eyeing transfer targets rather than cutting staff wages

St Mirren insist they have no plans to slash wages and are instead discussing signing targets for next season.

Relegation rivals Hearts have been forced to ask players and staff to take a 50 per cent cut to their salaries after the coronavirus shutdown sparked a cash-flow crisis at Tynecastle.

But the Buddies have vowed to honour all contracts for Jim Goodwin’s first-team squad as well as the rest of the club’s employees.

Saints chief executive Tony Fitzpatrick says not only are the Paisley outfit looking to offer new terms to players whose deals expire this summer, they are also drawing up plans to make fresh additions for when domestic action is finally able to resume.

Fitzpatrick told the club’s official website: “There is a lot of uncertainty and the club is like any business just now.

“There’s a bit of trepidation but as was mentioned in our statement the other day the club is in a reasonable enough position to deal with this at the moment.

“There are no thoughts of cutting anybody’s wages or making anyone redundant. We don’t know how long this will last so we will continue to monitor the situation as things go on.

“These are difficult times but I also think this is a real chance for us to really reflect on everything at the club.

“The board has been together quite a bit to discuss everything at the club. We have a number of players who are out of contract at the end of the season and we have loan players.

“We’ll obviously honour all those contracts and there are players in there that we would like to offer new contracts to.

“Jim will also have had a list of players that will be out of contract that we’d have been looking to sign in the summer and we are constantly discussing that.

“It’s on hold a bit just now as we aren’t sure where we are at with things but I’m a great believer that if we put the right plans in place and we keep working away then we’ll be ready when this all passes.

“We will need to wait for a decision from the SPFL in terms of how the league finishes and whether they will pay clubs on the basis of where they currently sit in the table.

“These organisations care about the clubs and there have been plenty of meetings that have taken place and hopefully they’ll be able to come to some sort of decision soon.”

Saints have already shutdown the Simple Digital Arena to protect staff from the spread of the virus.
Now Fitzpatrick has confirmed the club’s overseas stars have been allowed to return home to hunker down with loved ones.

“The manager has taken the decision to let all the foreign players go home to their families and it was the right decision,” he said.

“With football postponed until at least the end of April, players will work towards being back at that date and hopefully by then we may have got on top of this.

“They have all been given an individual training programme to keep on top of their fitness.”