'Keeper Ready For New Deal As Sunderland Snub Bids

There's been lots of recent speculation about Simon Mignolet's future in recent months but this was ramped up last week with his supposed agent talking to Belgian TV about securing a move to a bigger team for his client.

We neglected to comment on this story other than on our podcast (listen HERE) as simply it didn't seem to need to be worth the write up. Mignolet is an incredibly talented player and we have to accept that one day, hopefully later rather than sooner, he will move on from Sunderland.

Until then though he will continually be linked with the likes of Arsenal and Manchester United, who have both been credited with an interest in the Belgian international.

Mignolet came out on SAFC TV last week to deny all rumours and reinforce the fact he's firmly committed to the club, and it seems the club are ready to do well by him as Martin O'Neill told The Journal today that the club aims to get him tied down to a longer deal in the coming months;

I spoke to Nico Claesen - who incidentally is his agent but was not the fella who made the comments - around about the January transfer window. I said to him at the time - and he was pretty happy with it - we'll deal with a new contract when the transfer window ends.

A month has gone on and while Simon has been very reassuring about the fact he wants to do something, it's better for all of us if we can get something sorted out.

There's obviously goodwill from all parties to do that.

As said above, the sooner we can tie down one of, if not the best player we currently have on our books. Mignolet has a bright future in the game and although he may currently be ousted at Belgium's number one by Chelsea's Thibault Courtois, there's no reason to believe that Mignolet can't overturn that.

In an interview with the same paper, Sunderland Chief Executive Margret Byrne revealed that bids had been made for some of our better players over the summer and in January, and we have no need to sell at the moment;

We're very lucky because even this summer we had offers for some of our players which were pretty juicy.

You wouldn't want to sell them, but ultimately Ellis is the owner and he's said they're not for sale. He's said they're 100% not for sale.

There was serious interest in some of our players, even in January.

We could have sold them. As chief executive it's not nice to be reporting a loss, but you'd rather do that and stay in the league, keep your best players and fight for Europe.

Putting two and two together and making four-and-a-half, you'd have to imagine some of these bids were for Mignolet given the extensive speculation.

However, it's all good things to hear at the moment and that the club aren't (for once) interested in selling our prize assets just yet.