Doncaster Rovers: Gavin Baldwin keen to end so much contractual uncertainty

Rovers started last season with 23 players entering the final year of their deals while 17 players will see their contracts expire at the end of the current campaign.

Having such high numbers of players requiring their futures confirming is something chief executive Baldwin is determined to eradicate from the club.

But he believes the departure of managers in successive summers has played a major role in Rovers entering seasons with so many deals in their final stages.

"Before Darren [Ferguson] left and then Grant [McCann] left we had a clear strategy of no more than six contracts falling off the end of every year," Baldwin told the Free Press.

"I would say due to circumstance that hasn't happened over the last few years and we need to get back to clear parameters of how many contracts we do have set to end every year.

"We're working on that with Darren [Moore].

"Darren has got very strong feelings of how many loans are appropriate for a club in League One that is pushing for promotion and is also very clear on how many contracted players we should have in the squad so those parameters are being tested again, being set in stone and we'll be advised by Darren on it.

"We don't want to get back to the scenario of too many contracts falling off the end.

"It should be a rolling programme of approximately six like we had before, and that was working before.

"But again, to give Darren a compliment, he was where he was when he came into the club.

"Grant was on a programme of releasing players and bringing new ones in that had been supported by the board but he unfortunately left in the middle of that process when players had gone out but most of them hadn't come in, which left us in a difficult situation but one I think Darren has coped with brilliantly."