Michael O’Connor’s contract saga is set to drag on until the end of the season, with Scunthorpe United admitting they are not confident the midfielder will stay beyond that point.

O’Connor’s current deal expires in the summer and the club have said they are not prepared to bust their budget in order to keep him.

General manager David Beeby explained talks are currently ‘on hold’ and are unlikely to resume until later in the campaign.

“The thing is with this situation, when you are a relatively small club, others can offer more money,” he said.

“You can fully understand the situation, players are looking to get the best possible contract.

“The best position for them is to turn down a contract and sign for who makes the best offer.

“That doesn’t just happen at Scunthorpe United.

“It’s not in the player’s interest to commit themselves early, they want to make it last as long as possible.

“We’ve accepted it happens but we have a wage budget which we’ve got to stick to and unfortunately we can’t go over that.

“If we reach our maximum, there’s not a great deal we can do. We can’t force people to stay.

“We made a number of offers to Michael in the summer and at the start of the season.

“We’ve sat down with his agent as well and had some discussions.

“Unfortunately we weren’t able to reach an agreement.

“We feel we’ve taken it as far as we can.

“We’ll keep trying to encourage Michael to sign a new contract and we’ll sit down and speak sometime between now and the end of the season.

“In the summer it was unlikely he would sign a new deal. His agent made it quite clear that our offer was not good enough and didn’t really specify what would get Michael to sign a new deal.”

Peterborough last year expressed an interest in the Northern Irishman but have not been back in touch since.

Beeby accepts any offer they may make to O’Connor later this year could be too tempting to turn down.

“If others are prepared to pay more than we can afford, we would fully expect him to chose another club over us,” he said.

“We had interest from Peterborough prior to the start of the season. And if they were to come in and offer a bigger contract, playing in the Championship, it would be difficult to turn down.

“But we’ve had no interest whatsoever since the summer.”

O’Connor himself insists the uncertainty over his future is not affecting him, but is keen to get the issue sorted.

Having seen former Iron team-mate Josh Wright struggle to find a club after leaving Glanford Park last summer, he wants to avoid being in a similar situation.

“I want to have my future sorted by the start of next season,” O’Connor said.

“Come March, April, May time, I’ll have to sit down and speak to the chairman or do something.

“I don’t want to be waiting until June, July, August and not have a club.

“I’ve still got six or seven months of my contract so I’m happy enough just to keep playing and see what happens in the summer.

“I’m just concentrating on helping Scunthorpe out on the pitch.

“I think I’ve been playing allright the last few weeks, I just need to keep my form up there and try to score some goals.

“If I don’t play well they (the fans) complain, if I do play well they say I’m just playing to get away.

“I’ve always tried my best for Scunthorpe and I’ll keep doing that.”