Yeah well, it’s been reported for a while that we don’t do release clauses.
Don’t know if that has changed or we’d be more open to it these days (or in some special cases)…
I doubt Trent would have signed it with all the uncertainty (Klopp leaving, Slot in, Mo and Virgil contracts coming to an end to), coupled with the fortunes on offer if he moved to RM for free, and his desire to play for Madrid, which appears to have been in his thinking for quite a while now.
Mac’s transfer was a release clause. Frimpong’s impending transfer seems to be us triggering the release clause too.
We aren’t necessarily against release clauses but we do seem to be willing to pay a little extra over the release clause so as to not pay the entire fee at one go.
Clauses in our players’ contracts.
Oh. Yeah. That one hasn’t been in place ever since our contract with Suarez.
I guess the rationale for that is, we are not a selling club, so why would be put release clauses in. We are here to compete for the highest honours.
It probably means, overall, we are in a stronger position (when things on the pitch are going well), with few players actually wanting to leave/leaving for free (unless their time is up). Trent is an outlier here. Generally in football, this is becoming a trend. Its why we need to get a few contracts sorted this year (Ibou and Macca are the two i want to see sorted sooner rather than later)
More importantly, we might well have looked at the situation and decided that £50m was worth it retaining him for one more season to win the title?
Doubt we would have thought the title was realistic before the season started, TAA or not. We have a similar dilemma now with Konate and I think it’s an open question what the club could do.
It would need to be proportionate to the contract length, and the player. If Trent signs a 4 year deal, his exit clause couldn’t be £50m
Fans, perhaps. Otherwise the people in charge would have looked at it and probably evaluated it (correctly) as a situation where we had a team that only fell short thanks to injuries and as @cynicaloldgit would point out, being shafted by referees.
We were 9 points short, having been obviously robbed by at least 3 (I’m thinking against Spurs), and having lost our full-backs repeatedly through the season. Let’s not forget that Clark even got himself a start. Kelleher got 10 starts.
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That would beg the question of why Real Madrid would pay it, since it would take a significant chunk out of their budget.
Not to mention the Odegard handball and city getting away after kicking Mac in the chest. That’s 6 points right there.
Also the point remains that at the time those refereeing mishaps (against Arsenal and City) happened, giving those decisions in our favour would have probably ensured that we would have clinched the league as we were in the process of building a sizable lead that year.
Injuries played a part in us derailing but refereeing decisions played a bigger part.
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We also had a new manager making a huge step up and replacing one who had been regarded as brilliant at motivating his players. I can’t imagine that the club said to Slot ‘we expect you can win us the title this season, so we’re keeping TAA instead of cashing in’
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I can’t imagine them saying to him “we’re expecting you to not do so well so we’re going to jeopardise your progress and standing with the fans and weaken the team by cashing in on our world-class vice-captain and starting right-back”.
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Might a @gasband illustration help in the imagination process?
(Can @gasband draw a good Arne or even a passable Henry?)
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I assume sign on fee’s factor into budgets.
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FIFY
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