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TONY Mowbray hasn’t ruled out re-signing one or more of the five Boro players whose contracts lapsed yesterday.

But he’ll only do so if their wage demands fit in with the new reality of the club’s salary structure.

Matthew Bates, Tony McMahon, Justin Hoyte, Bart Ogbeche and Malaury Martin officially ceased to be Boro players over the weekend.

But Mowbray isn’t panicking over the situation.

He said: “I’m not in a rush at this point in time to sign players without looking at everything that is available.

“We’ve had contract discussions with one or two of them but they are testing the marketplace.

“We had a similar scenario with Julio Arca last year and he signed, so let’s wait and see.

“There will come a time, of course, when I have to fill positions in the team and if it’s not with players that we’ve had previously and we can not renegotiate the right numbers for them then we will move on and sign another player.”

The five players are not all in the same boat regarding their futures.

McMahon and Hoyte are likely to earn new contracts somewhere within English football and will spend the next few weeks searching for the best deals available.

But Ogbeche and Martin face uncertain futures and Matthew Bates won’t be able to resolve his long-term circumstances until he overcomes his cruciate knee injury.

Mowbray said: “The reality of it is players have their own expectations of what they think their salaries should be or what they would like.

“And it’s whether they can achieve it either here or somewhere else. And if it’s somewhere else then good luck and we’ll have to move on.

“We’ve had conversations with some of our own players that were here last year. And while they have an opportunity to look at the market, we’ve also had an opportunity to look at the market.”

Boro target Jacob Butterfield, who has been linked with Norwich, was today expected to reveal his plans for the coming season.