John McGreal has revealed Colchester United are still trying to persuade Kane Vincent-Young to stay at the club.

The 22-year-old is a free agent this summer and is yet to sign the new contract offered to him by the U’s.

Should Vincent-Young leave the JobServe Community Stadium, any club he joins would have to pay compensation for his services due to the fact that he is under 24 years old.

Ipswich Town are among the clubs linked with a move for the former Spurs youngster, who has reported back for pre-season training with Colchester this week.

McGreal admits Vincent-Young’s future is now out of their hands – but the U’s boss says they have not given up hope of keeping last season’s Young Player of the Year at the club.

McGreal said: “Kane is a little bit different, because there’s that compensation on his head.

“We’re still trying to keep him at the club but we know it’s out of our hands at times, if there are other clubs out there who want him.

“Kane’s attitude is fantastic.

“He’ll get on with his work and looking at his stats, he’s come in and done really well.

“At this moment in time, who knows what’s going to happen?

“We’d love him to stay so it’s one where we’ll wait and see what happens.

“We’ll still try and persuade him to stay because he’s been one of our own and he’s been a prominent player in my starting XI, over the last two years.

“I’d love him to stay and we’ve made that quite clear but if big clubs come knocking and try and persuade him, we don’t want to stand in a player’s way.

“It’ll be a case of having a little bit of patience with Kane and seeing where that takes us.”

Meanwhile, boss McGreal has confirmed that goalkeeper Sam Walker and Sean Murray have both left Colchester.

The pair were out of contract this summer and are now set to join new clubs, having failed to agree new terms with the U’s.

“We put timings on the players (with contract offers) and it came to the stage after a couple of weeks that their decisions hadn’t been made,” added McGreal.

“Steve (Ball) and I, along with the chairman (Robbie Cowling) and Tony Humes decided that we were moving on and that’s what we’ve done.

“We’ve moved ourselves forward with other players.”