At his August media briefing, chief executive Nigel Clibbens confirmed that United have received a ‘windfall’ following striker Charlie Wyke’s summer move from Bradford to Sunderland.
Wyke made 89 appearances and scored 39 goals during his two-year stay with the Blues but a trigger clause was activated when the Bantams came calling just over 18 months ago.
Explaining the intricacies of this latest development, he said: “When you have a sell-on clause, for a player who has been sold on, you don’t get to see what the contract is for that player sale.
“What happens is that an amount of cash lands in your bank account and a couple of days later you can say ‘this is what it’s for.’
“You then generally have to work out how much he was sold for and you ask the other club [for confirmation]. Sometimes they tell you and sometimes they don’t. That’s why it can take a few days for these things to wash out.”
“In Charlie’s case, when he signed his second deal [with Carlisle United] an exit clause was put in, which has obviously been a matter of record. There was no sell-on clause at that point for us.
“When Charlie then went on his to move to Bradford, we were able to negotiate a sell-on clause as part of him leaving, despite having no right to it and with him being able to move anyway, under the terms of the trigger clause.”
“In terms of the value [of the sell-on amount due to Carlisle United], I can’t tell you the exact amount because I would need Middlesbrough’s permission,” he continued. “That’s because they have a sell-on figure due to them from our sell-on, if you see what I mean.
“Everything we get going forward, we’ve got to hand a significant proportion of that to them. That means they’ve done well out of a clause that we negotiated that wasn’t originally there. As well as their permission we’d also need to get Bradford’s permission and, probably, they would need to get Sunderland’s permission. The chances of that are zero.”
“The end result is that we’ve got a nominal amount out of the deal,” he confirmed. “It isn’t something that would even pay for a stand roof – you might get half a player for it.
“It’s a nice windfall that we weren’t expecting, but it’s relatively insignificant. Maybe we’ll get some more in the future, if Charlie does well at Sunderland, but it’s nothing that’s going to significantly change anything.”
