Latest: Rich Hughes addresses futures of Portsmouth's out-of-contract quartet as Championship rebuild begins

The futures of Pompey’s out-of-contract quartet should become clearer this week.

Marlon Pack and Connor Ogilvie have been offered new deals, with the duo regarded as ‘hugely important’ to the Blues’ Championship plans.

In addition, talks are planned with Joe Morrell and Zak Swanson before the end of the week, with terms not yet discussed.

Pompey decided against taking up the pair’s options, but have indicated they are willing to explore a way of keeping both on the south coast.

All four were members of the 18-strong Blues contingent which have been celebrating the League One title in Las Vegas and are scheduled to return today.

And sporting director Rich Hughes is hopeful the quartet can remain at Fratton Park.

He told The News: ‘The fact we haven’t offered a lot of contracts shows how hugely important Marlon and Connor are to us.

‘We’ve not made a decision based on sentiment, these are two players we think can definitely help us in the Championship, that’s why we are looking to retain them. We genuinely wouldn't if we didn’t think that was the case.

‘They have already been offered contracts and obviously been having a well-deserved break. Once they get back, they will speak to their agents and we’ll have a conversation. Hopefully we can get two deals concluded.

‘As it stands, we haven’t offered anything to Joe and Zak. There will be conversations which we will continue to progress through and they are scheduled for the next couple of days.

‘Their options were just for one year and we wanted to have conversations about restructuring the length of contracts and the different mechanisms you can put in place.

‘There are various different avenues and what we’ve had to be aware of is the fact that if we didn’t take up their options then they could leave. They’re going to be free agents and we will be speaking to them almost as such.

‘If we could find scenarios where both stop with the club and everybody is happy, we’d be pleased about it, but we want to protect everything from both the players’ perspective and the club’s perspective.

‘Everything has to be right for them to remain Pompey players and we’ll sit down over the coming days.’

Champions Pompey have so far released 10 of their 2023-24 squad, including Joe Rafferty and Sean Raggett.

Others are Josh Martin, Lee Evans, Matt Macey, Ryan Schofield, Harry Jewitt-White, Haji Mnoga, Liam Vincent and Josh Dockerill.

Hughes added: ‘It has to be right for everybody, we want to build the best Championship squad and we will make the decisions accordingly.’