A new contract would come at a cost. Possibly even an increased wage. And this is aside also from the point that max may not have wanted to discuss it earlier.
When offering new contracts to secure players who are running to the end of contracts, then you have to weigh up a few things:
Of course one risk of not signing up early is that youll lose a good player and then not be able to replace him. The cost of this is possibly an increased wage you simply cant afford.
Whereas the risk of signing up early is that the player gets a serious injury, or goes out of form, falls out with the manager, or just isnt preferred by the manager. The cost is that you then are spunking a load of money on a player you cant use or dont want.
The balance is hard to get. Byrne, hes now out of contract but potentially going to take a while to get back from injury. So its probably a good thing he wasnt signed up a year ago. So thats a positive decision. The ehmer one, well he is a good player, and one we all probably feel is a loss, so maybe the balance wasnt found there, but then no one knows what we might have had to forego budgetwise if we had signed him up. We just signed tucker on a longer term deal. Maybe it was one or the other. I know who id rather have.