Sunderland braced for interest in four key players as club hierarchy hope for quick contract decisions

But the club’s sporting director is well aware of the fact that the players will also be attracting rival interest.

The Black Cats confirmed their retained and released last week, and are keen to keep four players on Wearside for the 2021/22 season.

Aiden McGeady, Denver Hume and Luke O’Nien have all been offered new contracts by the club while discussions are ongoing with top scorer Charlie Wyke.

Talks will continue this week and Speakman is hopeful for as quick a decision as possible from the quartet, but knows there will be outside interest.

"We've been in discussions with those guys and their representatives,” he said, speaking to safc.com.

“It's always going to be a difficult period because they are players that have done well for us, hence we want to re-engage them.

“But obviously because they've done well for Sunderland there's other people going 'these guys have done well for Sunderland, and we would also be interested in them'.

"It's going to be a piece of work which we want to try and reduce the timeline as quick as possible and therefore is helps us on our platform for where we're going and who we might be looking at in the future months.

"We feel they can all contribute to the Sunderland of the future, and therefore hopefully we'll be able to get them over the line.”

O’Nien is reportedly drawing admiring glances from the Championship, while Wyke has been linked with likes of Celtic and Ipswich Town in recent weeks.

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