Fuck me Big Sam was talking some sense about buy-out clauses today

Sam Allardyce said yesterday that the club's contractual dealings have left United in a "precarious" situation. That is down to buying in August rather than June or July and then agreeing to get-out clauses demanded by players and their agents. "Panic-buying" was how Allardyce put it.
Allardyce's argument is that not only does purchasing players late in the summer affect planning, prices are higher and a club's bargaining position weakens. That, he argued, leads to clubs agreeing to destabilising buy-out clauses in contracts, an issue that directly affects Newcastle now as Michael Owen has one for £9m and Obafemi Martins another at £13m.

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"I would like them to be eradicated if possible," Allardyce said of such clauses. "We have moved quickly in the transfer market and in my experience the quicker you move, the cheaper it is. As time goes by instead of getting cheaper, the more expensive it gets. And the quicker you move in the market and the more targets you can hit, the better. Otherwise other people will hit those targets and take those opportunities from you.
"Then you're left with a flawed system, where the panic sets in and you get into the position where you start the season with two or three games in August and realise you haven't got what you thought, or someone gets injured, and you panic-buy.

"That's the worst type of business any football club can do, particularly a club like Newcastle. You end up with negotiations that could leave you with clauses in contracts like we have now. Everyone knows about the clause in his [Obafemi Martins'] contract. It leaves us in a poor position."

Now - remember when we signed Little Earn? It was 23:59 on the January deadline day, with Worthy's ring twitching like it had OCD because Ashton had gone and he HAD to have a big name striker or he was TOAST.

And guess what? With our nuts in the mincer, we agreed a f**king stupid cheap buy-out clause. Another triumph for NCFC's brilliant business brains.

Posted By: Old Git on June 29th 2007 at 15:44:05

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