Based on what precident? Have we ever seen such a high "break" clause before?
Jadon Sancho - Chelsea (loan) watch | £5M opt-out fee
- Thread starter horsechoker
- Start date
-
In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) and Imran (@Annihilate Now!) talk about the proposed new stadium, season ticket prices, Sir Jim Ratcliffe and all things INEOS after the first year of their co-ownership.
They also discuss back-to-back victories vs. Real Sociedad and Leicester City - was this the best week for Amorim so far?
This.
Only just catching up on this but, yeah, that sounds right and was the exact fee I guessed it likely was on here a week or two ago.
As I said then, there's no way with our poor negotiating abilities (and poor position we find ourselves in with unwanted players on huge wages) that we'd have negotiated such a huge break clause as some were suggesting.
We can't even get loan fees for players, and have to help with wages a lot of the time - so in effect paying other clubs for them to take our players rather than vice versa - so there was never any way we'd have successfully got Chelsea to agree to a deal that was so great for us and so poor for them.
That was never happening. £5m sounded far more likely so really not surprised at that news.
A 5m break out clause is silly in today's football. We could have gone for a loan to buy fee with a 7m-8m loan fee on top. That would have attracted more suitors (possibly in a league that is better suited for Sancho) + it would have stopped Sancho from feeling too giddy and insult his current employees with the FREEDOM BS thing
It's easy to say that but no you couldn't, otherwise you would've.
Things always seem to be more difficult to us as opposed to others. Others get 20m for academy players despite they barely ever played first team football. We constantly sell academy players for less then a million. Meanwhile we're taken for a ride whenever we try to buy as well. While others buy good players for reasonable prices we end up buying the likes of Casemiro and Hojlund for silly money. We even call it the Manchester United tax (There's no Real Madrid tax or Juventus tax or Liverpool tax cause we're incompet erm special).
The good thing about the obligation to buy clause is that the buyers are obliged to buy. Hence why clubs are willing to lower their demands (as opposed to a right to buy) to have that inserted in the deal. We somehow managed to fudge that as well.
This is the second time Chelsea took us for a ride in the last few years. First they sold us their wreck for 50m despite him having just 1 year left in his contract and now this. Some might say its the third time as they showed the finger to SJR who ended up with us.
The thing is, this assumes United negotiators always extract the maximum from every deal, I think its fair to say evidence suggest this is false
This clearly isn’t what happened. What happened was it was reported as an obligation to buy and us as fans didnt know about the clause to return him.
The club obviously knew he was very likely to come back and more than likely the only deal Chelsea would go for with us being in a weak position.
It wasn’t some secret clause that cheeky Chelsea have read the small print and pulled our pants down. Journalists missed that important detail in the loan
That may be the case, but to the eye, he is not the same player trying and coming up short; he’s been a player who has next to no appetite for the efforts of the game (training to improve or otherwise) for so long now that it defines him.
He’s not the same player I used to cheerlead for and was delighted we purchased - to my eye, he has half-arsed it for so long I’m convinced he doesn’t even want to be a footballer anymore, let alone a star or superstar. I think I and many others could stomach effort that comes up short. To me, he/this is not that; he’s lost a lot of what made him special and doesn’t seem to have any desire at all to get it back.
Me personally, I think the England penalty miss broke him. I am sure others would disagree, but for me, a light went out in him that day and he checked out.
Yeah, agreed that Chelsea would never have considered cancelling this deal if it was going to cost them anywhere near the purchase price. From our side - then we "sold (to the fans/public/media)" or "worded" the loan conditions very poorly.
An obligation should be irrevocable, once the obligations conditions were met (in this case, I think it was Chelsea finishing top half iirc?) and then the only way to get out of it should have been essentially via a breach of a contract - and these values are usually negotiated around the "value of the contract".
By giving Chelsea an option out of the agreement at a value nowhere near the contract terms (without even factoring in wage implications), I'm not sure it should ever have been communicated as an obligation, but rather as Chelsea having purchased some sort of "buy option" (or a penalty if the buy option wasn't exercised). Semantics at the end of the day, I guess.
Because you are usually negotiating from a position of weakness and desperation, whereas others usually try to negotiate from a position of strength. You were absolutely desperate to get rid of Sancho. Everyone knew that. And due to his horrible form and immense wages, there were very few possible suitors.
So basically you could take the offer from Chelsea and try to negotiate slightly better conditions or not get rid of him at all. Choosing the first option made sense for you, as there was no chance in hell of Sancho making it back into your team. So you got rid of him and his wages for a season and had reasons to hope you might get rid permanently.
I don’t see what you could have done differently. You’ve made the best out of a bad situation and Sancho somehow managed to disappoint again, as he couldn’t even meet the lowest possible expectations.
About a week before he signed for us then.
Yep. Wording it differently it's like a £ 5 million loan fee with an "option" to buy.
NOT what fans were being told from the beginning.
Why would journalists lie to portrait the deal as a better business for United than what it effectively was?
This is a situation where we have to choose between the management being either cartoonishly incompetent, or competent but shamelessly lying to the fans. They have history in both which makes it difficult, altough Chelsea itself presenting it as an obligation to buy at the time points to the former.
we always seem to negotiate from a position of weakness and desperation. Even back in the day when we were selling internationals like Phil Nev, Nicky Butt and Berbatov for a packet of crisps each. Let's just admit that this club is horrible in selling players and this issue had been going on for decades.
Sadly, we can't successfully negotiate those kinds of loan fees that normally go with international players being loaned out between top flight clubs.
A combination of the overall incompetence of our negotiating abilities in the last decade, means we're stuck with unwanted players on huge wages and so rather than actually get a loan fee when loaning those players out, we end up often even covering some of the wages and so in effect still paying players to play for another team!
So there was no way we'd find a team who'd cover his high wages and pay us the usual loan fee for Sancho. We're still behind other clubs in terms of being able to do that.
And with us being in that difficult position, there was never any likelihood that we'd successfully negotiated such a high break clause as was being suggested. It was always, in reality, going to be much lower. No way would we have got Chelsea to agree to such a high break clause in our poor negotiating position.
You know that better than I do, as I didn’t follow the club as much as now. But for the last few years, your statement is definitely true. Fellaini being the most grotesque example of your transfer dealings for me, as you basically waited for ad long as necessary to create the worst possible position to negotiate from.
However in case of Sancho I don’t think anybody really did anything wrong or screwed up. Even though I’m skeptical of your new management, they inherited the Sancho-mess and dealing with is is really difficult. Sancho, for as long as he receives the heavy wages he does, is basically a negative asset. Getting rid of those would be difficult for every club in the world, not just United.
And it’s not like others don’t have similar issues. We for example weren’t able to get rid of Goretzka due to his wages and had to loan Tel out with an option instead of an obligation.
Sancho is obviously a worse case. But basically every club paying high wages has issues like these.
we will need to hope he tears it up in the last couple of months for Chelsea to convince them to take the plunge
and yes before you say it the chances aren't great
Amorim must be wondering where the next kick in the balls is going to come from
and yes before you say it the chances aren't great
Amorim must be wondering where the next kick in the balls is going to come from
The clause isn't that bad and we will have considered it when we negotiated. £5 million cash, and over half his wages paid over the year means he was minimal cost for a year. Next year he's got less book value, leading to nothing when his contract runs out so we can look for another loan to minimise the final year.
This stat from the BBC made me laugh "Sancho's underlying stats are also troubling as none of his 19 previous crosses in the Premier League have reached a team-mate."
This stat from the BBC made me laugh "Sancho's underlying stats are also troubling as none of his 19 previous crosses in the Premier League have reached a team-mate."
Haven’t said anyone lied. They clearly didnt know of this. Sorry I wasn’t clear.
Last edited:
It's way older then that mate. Old farts like myself remember us selling Berbatov for 5m. Before that we sold proven English internationals such as Philip Neville and Nicky Butt for 3.5m and 2m respectively. It's shocking that the 4th highest fee we ever received for a player is that of David Beckham back in 03/04.
This club had allowed itself to be swindled on the transfer market for decades. We buy for ridiculous fees and we sell for peanuts, something we love to call the 'United tax'. Guess what? There's no 'Real Madrid tax' or 'Chelsea tax'. What they do have is competence.
Bayern got 8.5m as a loan fee for Tel (half a season) with Spurs paying all of his salary. That's how deals are made.
Last edited:
I distinctly remember some on here wanting to splash 120-150M if needed. Actually, the fact we had waited a year for Covid to lower the fee to a cool 70M was regarded as a coup.
As soon as we agreed terms with Dortmund some Sky reporters hounded him arriving at the England Euros training ground and he just dropped his bag, started rummaging around and checking his boots while being asked about his big move... He wasn't playing cool, the guy clearly didn't give a flying feck, it was patently obvious. I remember conforting myself that at least we hadn't spunked 150M on him and hoping we somehow extricated ourselves from it as it was no done deal until after the Euros.
The deal is reasonable in the circumstances. We had to take what we could get. It's silly to be complaining about it, I think.
However we then clearly lied about the terms of the deal, pretending it was a much better one than it is. That is a fair thing to be annoyed about.
However we then clearly lied about the terms of the deal, pretending it was a much better one than it is. That is a fair thing to be annoyed about.
It’s probably telling that three of United’s top 10 sales came in 2001, 2003 and 2003, just before we caught a bad case of The Glazers in 2005.
Yeap. Dortmund won the Scammers of a Decade award on that one, only slightly ahead of Chelsea who stuck us with always-injured Mason Mount, for only slightly lower fee, albeit lower salary and at least Mount could point to a CL title on his resume
We employed a lot of people who should 100% known better, it was their entire job to know better, but oh well
It's essentially a loan with a fee plus option to buy, where the fee is waved if the option is exercised. Which again is the same as a loan with a fee plus an option that is a bit lower, but fee is not waved.
Off the top of my head I can only think of two reasons it was reported as it was. One is that the press just got it wrong, and no one bothered to correct them (I just checked, and Chelsea presented it as an obligation on their website, so that's unlikely). The other is that it's structured as a "break clause" for accounting/PSR purposes, because this way the fee will be an incurred cost at the end of the deal instead of at the start, and they didn't want to bring focus on that at the time.
Sancho is complete waster but this myth that he was only good with haaland needs to die. He was unreal for dortmund before haaland got there
Yep. I was just explaining the bare basics of employment law — once you add in the fact that there’s no precedent for this in footballers; they’re basically backed by the players union; the ridiculous sums and lawyers they have drafting the contracts etc… — it’s impossible to compare.
Forget about other people, @NewGlory who is here now being Mr Hindsight, talking about how it was criminal to pay what we did.. yet he was the one who was crying... pay whatever.
The same poster who said pay whatever... 2 years then has a go at the club for getting the player for like 40m less than what this chap wanted us to pay, yet calls it criminal.
As I mention a few posts up, the signs were there before the penalty as he offered nothing throughout the Euros.
I actually think 21yo Sancho checked out the moment he did the maths of earning 7x as much for the next five years.
Transfer had been agreed before the euros pending medical.
Doesn't really change the calculus, the alternative was paying a lot more while we loan him to somewhere else or keep him and pay the lot while he sits in the reserves.
Yeah, this makes the most sense.
It's difficult to be too critical of the club when as far as we know it was the only option right at the end of the window so it was either this or have him stuck here until at least January. Everyone knew how desperate we were to get rid, it's hardly the best position to start negotiations in. Realistically we lost the chance of getting a decent fee for him the day he was completely excluded from the squad, yes he eventually ended up being added back but it was clear that was only temporary.
And to be fair, I doubt they anticipated that he would be so bad that Chelsea wouldn't want to pay £20m which wouldn't even get you a good Championship player these days.
And to be fair, I doubt they anticipated that he would be so bad that Chelsea wouldn't want to pay £20m which wouldn't even get you a good Championship player these days.
Exactly, at the time, some fans were like Chelsea are robbing us, why are we selling for such a small fee.. now its all why didn't we make sure we get the 25m.
Everyone and their dog knows Sancho is rubbish, he just does not have the mental strength to be an elite level footballer. Its a shame but he is the classic example of players who rely on talent only.
Good job! You proved that you have way too much free time on your hands. Which really should not be rewarded with a response, but I will play along this one time...
I was reacting to what the club and media were saying and stating "if he is that good and so universal..." Keyword being "if"
It was not and is not my job to run deep analysis of the players we sign, I am a fan, not United recruiter or top executive
See how it works?
Didn't SAF say he used to let players such ad Butt and Neville go for smaller amounts as a thank you for service so they could negotiate larger signing fees? Certain I recall that.
Easier to do when we were loaded of course.
Antony has been really good for Betis it seems so I'm actually more worried about other two
Relax people.
1. Jim's not running a clown operations here. For the first time you have an owner that actually cares about the club.
2. If there is a break clause it would be punitive. £5M hardly sounds like that. And ask yourself why a club would devalue it's player by not just saying loan with buy option? Doing it this way would erode Sancho's value more which makes no sense. There has to be more to the clause which is not being reported.
3. Even if Chelsea breaks the clause, we are short of attackers and without Europe Sancho's wages would be much easier to manager
4. Also why would the same reporter who claimed it was a obligation to buy now change their story? Who benefits? Seems likely that Chelsea want out of the deal and are trying to make Sancho's value tank so United have reduced leverage and more incentive to renegotiate the original deal. Which we won't because we have competent people in charge now.
1. Jim's not running a clown operations here. For the first time you have an owner that actually cares about the club.
2. If there is a break clause it would be punitive. £5M hardly sounds like that. And ask yourself why a club would devalue it's player by not just saying loan with buy option? Doing it this way would erode Sancho's value more which makes no sense. There has to be more to the clause which is not being reported.
3. Even if Chelsea breaks the clause, we are short of attackers and without Europe Sancho's wages would be much easier to manager
4. Also why would the same reporter who claimed it was a obligation to buy now change their story? Who benefits? Seems likely that Chelsea want out of the deal and are trying to make Sancho's value tank so United have reduced leverage and more incentive to renegotiate the original deal. Which we won't because we have competent people in charge now.
But these sort of clauses are probably inserted into all the obligation deals. But we don’t hear of it because it’s accepted that the clubs will act respectfully and not use it
Maybe I’m wrong but we didn’t hear of it at the time and it was reported as an obligation rather than an option
I’m sure that if Chelsea opt for the compensation it will not help relations between the club. Which probably won’t bother Chelsea fans but it won’t be good for those running the club