Confirmed, it all about how you pay for potential

WBA now say they are refusing to sell Saido Berahino because we have included too many add-ons basically just as I have explained in previous articles.



The transfer value of a player is a core value, i.e. what a player is worth on what he has achieved and additional value dependent upon his potential in the future.

A selling club wants to ignore future potential and have a large fee as if a player has already achieved his potential as if there is a guarantee it will happen. A buying club on the other hand want to pay a fee for what the player is worth, add a little extra in for potential and the remaining potential to be paid for through performance related add-ons.

Therefore if the player doesn't achieve what the selling club think he can achieve then you don't pay the add-on amounts he doesn't trigger, thus the selling club would receive a lower fee. That is the problem with the Berahino deal. He isn't worth £25-million, he may be in the future, but there is no guarantee of that and therefore you shouldn't pay that as part of any guaranteed fee.

WBA basically want as small an amount of add-ons as possible and are thus refusing to give Berahino the move he wants, he no longer follows the official club Twitter account, he unfollowed that which makes a very public statement.

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It has been very clear for quite a while that this is not about the fee, but how the fee is paid. The transfer fee would have been known at the beginning of the window, agents generally know roughly how much a club wants for a player and they talk to potential buyers.

There has been plenty of posturing, Fazio has been a carrot dangled and then taken away when WBA refused to be more amenable to add-on payments. We now have WBA trying to convince their fans that they were never going to sell and they are the victims in all this, it's simply a PR exercise to save face and portray themselves in a light favourable to their supporters.

Don't get me wrong I'm not knocking them for doing so, we do the same thing, every club does, it's part and parcel of the game, the media are there to be used. Most fans simply lap up what they are told, following a story like sheep and believing everything the popular press put before them, there has been many a court case that demonstrate papers are not the bastions of truth they would have the public believe.

Will there be more twists and turns, Berahino is said to be furious, how many times have we heard of a furious player, it rarely affects performance for too long, the player doesn't simply start hoofing the ball into the stands to vent his displeasure.

The latest round is simply WBA trying to force Spurs to give them what they want, a guaranteed payment for the unfulfilled potential there is no guarantee he will fulfill. In other words, they want a payment for something that may never happen, as opposed to payments if and when it does happen.

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