Hysteria and hyperbole a common tactic on internet forums when one can't bear to address the facts directly. I am amused.
The facts are the following:
- Amad was a very highly regarded youth prospect in Serie A
- The contract that sent Amad to United includes a clause that adds on potentially another 18m payable to Atalanta should certain conditions be met.
What could these conditions possibly be? They can include a Balon d'Or trophy, but it's unlikely that such a clause was inserted in that contract. They are typically performance-related metrics such as appearances and goals scored. Typically, almost universally, the add ons are related to the performance of the player and almost always focus primarily on player appearances and not performances such as goals scored, assists or even xG. Put another way, the point of add ons is to provide a hedge for the buying club that if a player doesn't quite work out and his appearances are minimal that the financial hit to the buying club is lessened to some degree, as opposed to a full 37m straight up transfer fee that otherwise would have been paid to Atalanta in this case had Amad made numerous appearances for United. The appearance based clause in clause in Amad's contract is, if media reports are to be believed, roughly equal to the base transfer fee. This is not new news.
With this knowledge, your follow up question would undoubtedly be how could anyone be sure that financial considerations would in any way impact the manager's decision to play or not play any player? What I would urge you to do is to take the diapers off and understand that football is a business for the people who put on the show to entertain us. Yes of course ETH puts on the best XI he has available to him, but financial considerations are taken into account every day as to who is in the squad in the first place. We take a pass on some players because someone within the club deems the overpriced and we keep some players because we can't sell them, at least not a price that the club is willing to accept. And then we keep other players to "protect their value", which is a daft concept but there is some logic to it. United are a publicly traded company, yes with a new management team in town without question, but it is not a club that can spend whatever it wishes. And of course we have the vultures at the top of the company pyramid. The club has to align expenditures to some degree with revenue and if we have players like Amad who will cost the club another say 50k/appearance even if the substitution takes place in stoppage time, that cost is not going to be ignored club management.
This takes us back to why we're not seeing Amad play even though he's now fully fit and Antony continues to flop? The real answer is that none of know what goes through ETH's mind when he subs on Antony but not Amad, but what we objectively know as fact is that Antony has been in horrific form all season (and to be honest, much of last season as well) and that on the few occasions we've seen Amad he's looked quite decent and by all accounts was brilliant last season for Sunderland. Antony was ETH's buy and Amad was not, so everyone here understands that ETH will always want to see his buy succeed. No problem with that at all. But with Antony having become an international joke and a "symbol of everything that is wrong at Old Trafford" (in the same report:
"It’s been claimed that the same department valued Anthony Elanga as more productive than Antony. With ten Hag desperate for a new right winger, the Premier League club paid the sum, three times what their own recruitment department believed Antony was worth.) and Amad not even getting a few minutes against a League Two side, we're well past the point of mere ETH homerism with his buy. It is at this point ludicrous that Antony continues to get minutes that he has done nothing to deserve while a highly regarded young player who has shown more in few appearances than Antony ever has in his multiple appearances, rots on the bench.
If it's not the add ons clause in Amad's contact that at least makes one wonder, then what is it?