Elliot Anderson and Eddie Howe (Photo: George Wood, Peter Nichols/Getty Images)
Newcastle United do not have a sell clause for Elliott Anderson as he closes in on a huge £130m move to Manchester City.
The England international has come a long way since his youth days at Newcastle, where he only made 44 appearances in the Premier League, the majority of them coming from the bench.
According to BBC Sport, Newcastle probably weren’t too worried about letting Anderson go when Nottingham Forest came to sign him, and their focus at the time was on releasing a homegrown player due to PSR concerns.
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This meant the Magpies were in a weak negotiating position regarding Anderson and simply sold him for £35m (fee via Sky Sports), with no sell or buy-back clause included.
According to a report from BBC Sport on Thursday night, Anderson is now on his way to Man City for a British record transfer fee of £130 million.
However, Fabrizio Romano changed his report and said it was £116 million, but this may be before future add-ons could increase the fee…
In any case, this is a huge sum, so think about what a 20% or 25% sell-on clause would do for Newcastle.
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Newcastle needed to sell Anderson to avoid points deduction
Despite having such good talent in their academy, Newcastle were spending too much on signing other players and faced the real threat of point deductions.
As the BBC report also points out, this puts pressure on them to sell Anderson to Forest on more favorable terms, with Forest making a huge profit from the deal.
The 23-year-old has blossomed into a world-class player at the City Ground and it will be interesting to see what he can achieve at the Etihad Stadium.
But Newcastle fans will have a hard time with this, and if it turns out that such top-class talent needs to be sold on the cheap due to overspending elsewhere, it would cast serious doubts on some of the club’s efforts in the transfer market.
