Speaking to Radio Sheffield, Richie Barker looked back at the talks; 'We made the best offer we could with the finances that were available and Richie decided it wasn't for him, We all understand that he's been an integral part of the football club over the years and was a bit of a fans favourite but we did the best that we could with what we had available."
"He decided he wanted to explore other avenues, whether that be for finances, opportunities to play at another level, location he's entitled to do that, that's what contracts are about."
"Every player has his value and you have to be careful that you don't get too carried away by offering a little bit more then a little bit more. If you do that with ten or fifteen players then you suddenly realise your budget has gone very quickly." Barker added.
"Between us we had an idea of what we thought Richie Smallwood's value was. But it might not have been down to that. People leave because they want a fresh challenge or they want to play in a different style or just a different location. So we agreed that's how much we could go to and also that we had to put a time limit on it because these things do have a tendency to drag on and if we'd allowed that to happen for another couple of weeks then maybe who we are looking for to replace him may have gone somewhere else."
"We've got to move on now. Part of our role is that if people don't accept our offers then we have to try and replace them as quickly as possible in the best way we can."