Bristol City are set to conduct fresh contract talks with Zak Vyner as the defender enters the final 12 months of his deal at Ashton Gate having neglected to sign extended terms earlier in the year.
Vyner was one of the individual success stories of last season after a summer transfer window in which he looked almost certain to leave his boyhood club. After reclaiming his place in the team, the academy product made 45 Championship starts - more than any other member of the squad - and was named Players’ Player of the Year at City's end of season awards.
Vyner has transformed himself from a talented, athletic but error-prone defender into a composed model of consistency at the heart of the Robins defence and has increasingly taken on a leadership role among his peers.
With his contract expiring this summer, City wanted to tie him down to a new deal around March - when George Tanner, Rob Atkinson and Max O’Leary signed new agreements - but the offer presented to the 26-year-old wasn’t viewed as satisfactory and the club instead took up the 12-month option in his agreement to give them some degree of security and time.
Speaking to Bristol Live this week, CEO Phil Alexander has revealed he’ll speak to Vyner over the next few weeks, as the players return for pre-season, to assess the position and whether he intends to now sign the previous terms or if a new proposal needs to be devised, which seems most likely.
“We’ve offered him an extended contract, he and his agent decided not to take it at that time - which was about three months ago - which is fine, that’s their prerogative,” Alexander said. “We still took up the option in his contract, so he’s still got another year with us and hopefully it will be for many more, but we’ll have to see.
“We’ll sit down probably in the next few weeks just to see where he’s at, but he decided not to sign at that particular time.
“We looked at some of the younger players, with regards to re-signing some of the existing players. The ones whose contracts were up and we felt would work.
"We did Max, George and Rob, so we’re quite pleased with getting those done during that fallow period. Again, just doing those, shows fans we’re thinking about keeping these younger players on our books and rewarded for the success they’ve shown.”
Reports have indicated Premier League Brentford are among the clubs who have taken an interest in the Bath-born defender and City are in the midst of a transfer window whereby any offer for Vyner will have to be listened to given his contract status and declining value.
That is, of course, unless fresh terms can be agreed but having raided QPR to sign Rob Dickie as he entered the last 12 months of his deal in west London, Alexander insists the club have prepared for all eventualities.
However, with Tomas Kalas' situation looking increasingly precarious as his contract expires in 10 days with no sign of him renewing, losing Vyner as well would, to an extent, undo some of the hard work the recruitment team has done in providing Nigel Pearson with defensive depth following the arrivals of Dickie, Ross McCrorie and Haydon Roberts.
“You could make a case for any of our players being the subject of attention from any other club, at whatever level,” Alexander added. “You’ve just got to be ready for that and, if and when things happen, make sure everyone understands what’s going on and you sign up to a plan of action to take care of it.
“I can’t second guess what’s going to happen in the market. And there’ll be some things that happen that we haven’t even thought of, so it will be interesting.
“We’ve still got several weeks of the window to go and there could be some people to come in for our players that we haven’t really thought about - there’s lots of noise around Alex (Scott) but there are others, so we need to work out how we’re going to manoeuvre around that.”
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