Chairman Lee Carter today gave the clearest indication yet that Lee Vaughan will not be an AFC Telford United player next season, insisting: “We won’t play hardball.”

The popular right-back is out of contract and Telford would have to offer him new terms at least matching his old deal if they are to pursue a fee from potential suitors for the player.

Clubs including Kidderminster and Mansfield have been linked with the 23-year-old, who has already declared his desire to try his luck at a higher level.

And Carter does not believe it would be in the interest of club or player to instigate what could lead to protracted and potentially messy transfer dealings.

“Lee Vaughan’s made it quite clear as to where he wants to be playing his football next season — and it’s not at the New Bucks Head,” he said.

“We’ve known about this situation for a while, and it would have been just the same even if the previous manager had stayed.

Tribunal

“Do we really want to try and play hardball and end up stuck with a player who wants to be playing at a higher level?

“You can go down the tribunal route, but there are no guarantees with that.”

Carter is also unwilling to make any decisions on players at Board level, insisting that should be the sole domain of the new manager when he is finally appointed later this month.

“The one thing that we as a Board of directors will not do is start recruiting players because of the opinion of the fans or ourselves on the quality of those players.

“It will be for our new manager to make those decisions, and every person we’ve spoken to so far has been very happy that they would have an almost clean slate to start with.”