According to The Times today Brentford received a £2M sell-on when Alfie left us for Swansea. If that and the reported £5M sale price were correct, then Brentford would have had 40%, which seems quite large for that type of clause. Not that it matters, of course. Alfie was terrific for us in the RB2HB season and would still have netted us a £3M profit. What may be seen as contentious is The Times' story claiming 'England's new centre-half production line - Brentford'. This seems to overlook the large part Barnsley played in Alfie's development through LeeJay and Hecky. To say nothing of the current national squad also containing Stonesy and our former loanees Keiran Trippier and Jack Butland!
That sounds about right - they let him go to us for peanuts after he'd done well on loan for Wycombe. I guess they thought he had the potential, but not enough to get him ready for their first team within a year or two, otherwise it'd have been a loan. As it went, the clause meant that they benefitted from our work putting him in the shop window, as well as their work developing him. Sounds fair enough. Woulkd be interesting to know what stake we have in his next sale though, and whether 40% of that too is due to Brentford.
I thought his contract at Brentford expired and he refused to sign a new one, coming to us instead. Mawson was a Brentford player in their development squad for 5 years from the age of 16 although he was out on loan for a lot of that time. We only had him for a year and were daft enough to sell him when he still had 2 years on his contract.
Firstly let me make it clear that I have absolutely no idea. But I did always assume that Brentford would receive a decent percentage of any profit we made on him. Whether that's as high as 40% I really don't know, but even if it is I still think it was a good deal. We got the player we wanted for relatively little outlay. We saw something in him, but this season has proven beyond all doubt that potential doesn't necessarily lead to anything at all. With Mawson we got a very good player and we made a massive profit, even taking away the money Brentford got. Had it not worked it wouldn't have mattered all that much due to the small initial fee. I wish we could have gone down a similar route with the players we've signed in the last two years. Yiadom will leave on a free in the summer, the only signing in that time who it's looked like we could actually make money on. As it stands, I seriously doubt we could make any profit on any of the rest. Would have been much better to pay small transfer fees with larger sell-on percentages.
The Barnsley official website confirmation of the transfer did, if my memory is correct, state something along the lines of: "We retain a substantial interest in Alfie's future performance."
