Cambridge United manager Mark Bonner has revealed that forward Paul Mullin has yet to decide on his future and that has been given more time by the club to weigh things up.
Mullin is set to be out of contract at Cambridge this summer and he is a man in demand after he enjoyed an exceptional campaign in League Two to help fire them to promotion.
In total, he fired in a highly impressive tally of 32 goals and provided four assists in his 46 league matches last term.
It has previously been reported by The Sun that Rotherham United are holding an interest in the striker. While Football Insider have reported that Middlesbrough are interested in making a move for the forward with Neil Warnock keen to add to his firepower upfront.
Football League World also believes that Blackburn Rovers could also be interested in making a move for Mullin during the summer transfer window. It is believed he is on their list of possible transfer targets should they lose Adam Armstrong.
Speaking to Cambridgeshire Live, Bonner insisted that Mullin’s future has yet to be resolved at this stage and that he is still considering his potential options and has been given more time by the League One club to do so.
He said: “He won’t be in training with us next week. He’s taking his time to meet people and see what other interest is out there.
“I understand his situation of wanting to see what else is available to him. He hasn’t made that decision yet, so that is in his court.
“Whilst that is going on, we continue to work and look at other options. If an option becomes available to us, it might be something that we pursue as well.
“It isn’t an open-ended and non-timeframed offer. I understand Paul’s situation and we’re in constant contact with him, but we’re waiting to hear back.
“We need to make sure we don’t leave ourselves short, and we’ve got the goalscoring options we need in the squad.
“That’s quite a fluid situation at the moment. I imagine in the next couple of weeks we’ll know where we are. I don’t know what those conversations are, or who they’ve spoken to.
“From our perspective, we’re making sure that we’re doing our work to make sure we’re not light in that position, and secondly, we’ve made that really clear to Paul and his agent now that that’s the situation.”
The verdict
This is a very difficult choice for Mullin to have to make this summer, but the fact that he has so many clubs that are interested in him just shows how well he managed to perform in League Two last season. He must select his next destination very wisely because he will not want to end up sitting on the bench elsewhere and losing his confidence from last term.
The step up from the fourth tier to the Championship is a sizeable one, but the likes of Middlesbrough and Blackburn are seemingly prepared to hand him the chance to make that jump this summer.
However, he would need to be sure that he is going to be seen as a crucial player at either club before moving there.
Mullin would likely be a major player for Rotherham if he opted to move there and there are other League One clubs that are interested.
However, he might feel that if he is to stay in the third tier it might as well be with Cambridge where he is already well established. It does though seem like his long-term future will be away from them at this stage.