There's two polar conflicting emotions on this one. On the one hand we've enabled a long serving player, who for whatever reason is deemed surplus, to go back to his first club, which is a Hell of gesture and typical of the 'family' type club ex-players have always stated we were. However, football is now a huge business, and no other club is going to 'enable' in this way by giving us one of their players for peanuts. We have to maximise transfer income to help fund and offset the huge amounts we have to spend.
It's like Kelly and Robinson. Sell on clauses should have been absolute minimums (I'm not saying they weren't inserted into the sale contract), even buy backs. Both those players, under the right conditions (which there possibly aren't at Anfield at the moment), could go on to be very useful players, and we need to be benefiting from that in some way down the line.
Arsenal benefited from a sell on clause from Birmingham City when we bought Pennant from them. Likewise, look at the amount overall they've raked in from the Carlos Vela deal. It wouldn't surprise me if we've had to accept sell on clauses in any of the Markovic, Balotelli, Lallana, Moreno, Origi or Lovren deals.
It feels like a Leeds style fire sale. Are we really that desperate now that we're unable to get the £7M for Assaidi and possibly the £14M for Borini?
