Mark Yates continued re-building the side for the next campaign with another batch of contracts being signed today.    Yesterday, after getting Jeff Kenna and Gavin Hurren to sign up for another year, he managed to extend the one year remaining on Russ Penn's contract by a further year taking him up to the end of the 08-09 season.

This is a major coup by the gaffer and will in effect warn off clubs that may be thinking about offering Penn better terms with them and not mind paying off a one year contract.    It also stops us having to worry about Penn being tempted elsewhere when his contract would have originally run out.

Today Yates signed up goalkeeper Scott Bevan for a further year too and put paid to the rumours that he was on his way back to Milton Keynes.    Many fans had been worried before the existing season had ended that we would be losing one of our most prized possessions because he had failed to sign a new contract.    Now they don't need to worry any further.

Also signing up for the summer today was Michael Blackwood, Brian Smikle and Michael McGrath (right).

Blackwood was expected and to a lesser extent so was Smikle but the re-signing of McGrath has come as a major surprise.

He was reported to have been in Yates bad books following his storming out of the dressing room after being sent there by the referee in a recent reserve game.    The hot headed youngster had been continually taking his frustrations out on one opposing player and the ref had told him to go off the pitch for a while.

McGrath refused and the referee, not wanting to send him off for petty reasons, told Ian Foster to treat him and at the same time to have a word with him.    McGrath refused treatment, went into the dressing room, changed, packed his bags and went home.

Most people thought that would be the last we would see of him but it appears that the manager has now forgiven him but one presumes that he's walking a tightrope.    That will explain why his contract is only a short term one of, probably, three months.

Players left that have yet to sign a new contract include Simon Russell, Jonny Harkness, Dean Sturridge and Steve Taylor.    Stuart Whitehead, Mark Creighton, Iyseden Christie and James Constable are all on longer contracts that will run for a further year.

I would expect the remaining contracts to be sorted early next week so that Yates can get on with the task of bringing new players in.