John Rudkin

[sylofox]

If players want a release clause then fair play but £20mill in this modern game is stupid. Should be at least £30mill for me.

What position do you play and are you that good really?

[WigstonWanderer]

I think you will find that it means if a club are willing to pay the amount stated in the release clause, then they can talk to the player concerned. If the player says he wants the move, then his present club can't stop the move to the new club. However if another club also want the player, then the price can be driven up by the 2 clubs competing for his signature.

Unfortunately in the case of Vardy it doesn't appear that a rival club are entering into the 'auction'.

Don't think it would necessarily mean that City would get any more if another club were competing.

Take the current case with Vardy. If another CL qualifying club were to enter the bidding, then as long as they are willing to pay the release amount (20m?), they can also talk to him. It would then be up to Vardy whether to go to either club or stay with us. This means that each bidding club will be competing for his signature and that might drive the wage offered upwards but they wouldn't need to pay City any more than the release amount.

On the other hand if it were a non CL qualifying club, there is no release clause in this instance, so it would be up to City whether to allow the club to make Vardy an offer. This might mean that City could get a higher transfer fee, but once again, Vardy could choose the original club (Arsenal in this case), and they would only need to pay the release amount. Also, because Arsenal are paying less transfer fee they should be able to make Vardy a better offer, so most likely that City would only get the release amount as Vardy would be more likely to choose the better offer.

BTW I don't have any legal training or other relevant expert knowledge, so this could be all BS, but it is the only way it makes sense to me.

City probably didn't expect a CL qualifying club to bid.

[filbertway]

Pretty sure a release clause just means the player in question has to sing this to Top and they can go.

[DANGEROUS TIGER]

The close season marks the beginning of the unnecessary "Witch Hunts". Even being Premier League Champions, doesn't prevent it from happening. 

[Bettsj2]

There was no clear evidence that Kante would have had the season he's just had. If anything, experience would have said he'd have needed a season to adapt to the English game. Yes we'd scouted him and knew he was a good player, but I doubt anybody had the foresight to know he'd be as good as he is.

At the time of signing him, a release clause of 4 x what we paid was quite reasonable.

Vards is a different kettle of fish but looking at how this proposed transfer to Arsenal has played out, I doubt he'd have signed the new deal recently if the release clause was any higher.

I think we get too concerned with how much other clubs pay for players or how they transact their business.

It must be an uphill batle to keep all the information about transfers confidential, especially when bidding for players. We can sit here and say, 'oh just offer a bit more and gerrit done', but the world knows the financial strength of a Premier League side. Take Deeney for example. Watford have said he's worth nearer to £30m. If we went straight in at £30m, you really have shown your hand that you desperately want the player, in which case, Watford could throw anything back. We saw this with the Ulloa deal.

We are a sensible club and really do business the right way IMO. I'm sure nobody needs reminding of Peter Taylors famous, 'Their chairman assured me he was worth £5m' quote about Akinbiyi.

I'd rather us be savvy than naive.

[WigstonWanderer]

Presumably the release clauses were a way of keeping wages down. Unfortunately the gamble hasn't paid off, maybe a couple of million saved on wages but 10m lost in transfer value.

Much easier with hindsight though TBF.

[cjslcfc]

I'm not quite sure what people don't get about these release clauses...

 

1) In no world does a club insist on inserting release clauses into a contract, unless it's to put it at a ridiculously high amount to warn off potential buyers (like they do on the continent)

 

2) When we bought Kante for £5.5m he was someone who had made an impact in France but hadn't played years of regular top flight football. At that stage we were looking at pushing ourselves into the top half. We obviously thought he was going to make an impact here and, since he didn't seem that keen on coming, a release clause would be a useful tool to appease him and give us a chance. £20m is close to 4 times the amount we bought him for. There was no way we were planning for winning the league! So, £20m for a team sitting in the top half seems a pretty good deal. £20m for one of the key players of the champions is certainly peanuts - but we had no chance of planning for that ridiculous outcome. The same would go with Mahrez (although he was obviously happy here there's no doubts his sights are on CL clubs and he would have doubted, like us, that we could make that anytime soon).

 

3) Vardy is the curious case - with the season he, and we, had there was no chance that in Jan/Feb we suggested such a paltry release clause. It would have been at the request of him/his agent. Undoubtedly, I can only take another educated guess here but you'd expect that he would have had a lot of interest in Jan and this was a back up in case we didn't qualify for the CL. To me though it doesn't make sense. We could have held on a bit longer and waited until the end of the season. If he wanted CL football (and we didn't qualify) he could have been sold but for more money. Maybe he already knew no-one else would buy him for more than £20m. So many possibilities to be honest and no-one but LCFC and him/his agent really know what's going on or what has gone on to lead to this.

 

My point is maybe you can blame Rudkin for giving in too easily on the Vardy one but in no way can you claim he should have foreseen our season and refused such clauses for Mahrez and Kante. Qualifying for the CL was so farfetched, never mind winning the bloody PL!!!

[erlee]

Pretty sure a release clause just means the player in question has to sing this to Top and they can go.

wow that's cheesy as fvck..   that hair