What happens to a club when the transfer policy goes wrong?

Manchester United know they are in trouble (something Tottenham never wish to admit) and appear to be in the act of actually “paying players millions to leave Old Trafford this summer, with buying clubs ready to exploit the need to offload players,” according to the Telegraph.

What situations like this often give us are players being told in no uncertain terms that they don’t figure in the manager’s thoughts, and then loaned somewhere, anywhere, just to get part of their salary paid.

Apparently “Garnacho, Rashford and Brazil forward Antony have contracts until 2028”, which when signed was promoted as part of the Manu vision of the future, but which now looks a bit daft.  Not least when some of the loan deals (as as the one for Sancho going to Chelsea) look silly not because of the ability of the player but how much of his salary ManU will pay when he is playing for someone else.

With some of these players being on over £10m a year this is a problem – not just relating to the waste of money, but in terms of the FFP regulations.  

Part of the problem for clubs like ManU and quite likely Totty Hotty too, is that the club clearly want the players off its books, and that instantly reduces the amount any other club is going to pay for them.   Worse, the deals being talked about in some quarters are loan deals.   But loan a player out enough and you suddenly find his contract comes to an end in the next year and he knows he can walk away for nothing in one more season.   Which invariably means that some of the money that a buying club would have expected to pay in transfer fees now goes on the subsequent salary.

So awful is the situation that some players like Rashford are even saying who they wish to be transferred to, (Barcelona in this case) which instantly puts other clubs off.   We all know that buying a player who has said he wants to play elsewhere, never endears him to the fans.  The player makes the pronouncement to force through his desired move, but quite often the receiving club simply shrugs and says “no”.  Or non.  Or لا.   Especially in the case of Barcelona where the suggested buying club are in a financial crisis of their own makng (what with future TV rights having been sold to pay off past debts). 

In such a situation players are being told by managers to “find yourself a new club”.  It’s a dodgy move since it smacks of desperation which leaves potential buying clubs reducing what they will offer more and more – and that includes salaries.  It also damages the reputation of the club and the player.

Players of course love to play, and will take cuts to do so in the hope of everyone seeing how good they are and so offering a transfer fee a year on.   But, this view tends to ignore the depth of the current crisis among clubs with the new FFP regulations in place.  

In short, what we are seeing is players for whom only part of their salary is being paid by the club they actually play for.  Antony was loaned out to Real Betis for the 2024/25 campaign but it was reported that Betis only paid 84 per cent of his salary (or less) suggesting that some clubs are in trouble and are trying to off-load incredibly expensive failures.

Part of the problem is also that many contracts these days include a clause to the effect that at the end of the contract if the player doesn’t leave in a way agreed by the club, the player is then tied into another year with the club he doesn’t want to be at.