Raith Rovers: Boss Ian Murray has started fresh contract talks with some of the 15 players whose deals expire this summer

Top scorer Aidan Connolly, goalkeeper Jamie MacDonald, defenders Tom Lang, Ryan Nolan and Liam Dick and midfielders Connor McBride and Brad Spencer are among 15 Rovers stars out of their 24-man squad whose current deals run out in three months time and Murray is hopeful of keeping as many as possible at Stark’s Park.

"Some boys have done really well,” Murray told the Fife Free Press. “Obviously Aidan’s got 15 goals this season, Liam’s done really well in all the positions he’s played, Tom has come back from his cruciate injury and has done really well, Nolan the same, came up from down south and adapted really well.

"So these are all players that we will have discussions with and we have had discussions with three or four of them already.

"But it’s at a stage of the season where we’re keeping an eye firmly focused on the moment.

"It would be naive to think that some of our really good players aren’t being looked at elsewhere.

"Absolutely I’m hopeful of keeping some of those lads, we want to.

"But out of that 15 out of contract a few departures will happen because that’s football.

"I don’t want to have massive amounts of changes because I do believe that the squad we have needs to have three or four additions maybe in the summer.

"But if we can’t keep the ones we want, that changes.

"I’m not a huge advocate of massive turnovers at any point, because I think you need to do it a bit slower than that.

"We’re like any other club, we want to keep our best players. But if somebody else comes in and whisks them away then sometimes it’s out your hands.

"It’s been quite a different period with the club financially over Christmas and then suddenly you draw Rangers away (in the Scottish Cup quarter-finals), everybody thinks you’ve got loads of money and unfortunately that’s never the case.

"We always try and live within our means, that’s really important to clubs like ourselves.

"Within the 15 out of contract there’s a couple of younger players in there so we need to assess if long term they’re going to be good enough for Raith Rovers and is it the right thing to do for them?

"I’m more happy that we’ve got a really good nucleus of boys signed, Dylan Easton, Scott Brown, Ross Millen, Sam Stanton, Jamie Gullan all these sort of lads.

"We’ve got a decent core and a decent experience of boys that know what we’re trying to do.”