Stuey Byrne says he understands Damien Duff's frustrations at Shelbourne's slowness to nail down his future, but he expects the Dubliner to remain at Tolka Park and keep the club on an upward curve.
Shels finished fourth this season, which will be enough to get them into Europe if St Pat's beat Bohemians in this Sunday's FAI Cup final.
The Reds have been on an upward curve since Duff took the reins in 2021, but the former Republic of Ireland international admitted last weekend that he's currently in the dark over his own future.
Back in June, Hull City owner Acun Ilicali took a majority shareholding in the club and vowed to invest in the first team, the academy and the club's facilities.
Duff's current deal expires this year and though it would be a shock if Shels don't offer him a fresh contract, it's yet to happen.
"Nothing has been put in front of me," Duff said. "Everything seems to be very slow."
Speaking on the RTÉ Soccer podcast, ex-Shels midfielder Byrne said he could sympathise with Duff: "This is the time of the season where you want to be signing players, no doubt about it.
"Realistically you would have been speaking to players probably four or five weeks ago, so it's not ideal.
"When you look at what's going on at Shamrock Rovers, if your're Pat's, Derry, Bohs, Shels, you want to go, 'look let's get in here, let's get in here before they do, let's take advantage of the situation'.
"For Damien Duff, and if it is true what we're being told that there's a few bob on the way to invest into the playing side of things, he would want that now wouldn't he? He'd want to go out and get the best players that he can.
"So that must be extremely frustrating for him.
"Hopefully something gets done this week, which I'd expect it probably will."
Paul Corry agreed that Duff has Shels on the right track but warned they still have a way to go before they can realistically aspire to challenge at the very top.
"I think it's too big a leap to close the gap on Shamrock Rovers but if you look at the process that they've gone through from being promoted, they finished seventh last year, fourth this year and they've had an FAI Cup final in between," said Corry.
"You can see the steady building blocks that Duff is putting in place. Last year they were very diffcult to beat. This year was much of the same but with a sprinkle of a bit more quality when they were in possession of the ball and in the final third they looked a lot more of a threat.
"A lot of that was down to Jack Moylan [who is on his way to Lincoln City]. They were without Sean Boyd for a large part of the season, that's somebody who could come in and maybe fill a bit of that void but certainly need maybe three or four bodies to bridge that gap again to the likes of Derry and Shamrock Rovers.
"But they're not far away. You can certainly see the way he has them set up that they are probably one of the most frustrating and hardest teams to play against in the league.
"I can understand [Duff's] frustrations. He can obviously see where this team are at and where they can potentially go. They won't be far away, put it that way. But they are probably still a bit short of competing with the likes of Shamrock Rovers."
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