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Town Set for Windfall as Clarke Edges Closer to Brighton Move
Tuesday, 18th Jun 2019 18:14

Town look set to receive a significant windfall with former defender Matt Clarke edging closer to a move from Portsmouth to Premier League Brighton and Hove Albion.

Clarke, 22, has been tipped for a switch to the Seagulls for some weeks but now the deal is understood to be near to completion, with Football Insider reporting that the clubs are close to agreeing a fee of £3.9 million.

Town are understood to be due 20 per cent of the profit Pompey make on Clarke, who is believed to have been valued at £50,000 when he joined them as a makeweight in the £750,000 deal which saw Adam Webster sign for the Blues in the summer of 2016.

That would see Town receive £770,000 at a time when the club is facing a £9 million loss of revenue due to relegation to League One.

Given the overall drop in income, the Clarke windfall is unlikely to see a change in the club’s transfer policy, which is all but certain to be based solely on Bosman free signings this summer.

Barham-born Clarke came through the academy and made one start and four sub appearances for the Blues before signing for Portsmouth, with whom he spent 2015/16 on loan.

Town could also receive further financial boosts via sell-ons this summer with Webster, currently with Bristol City, understood to be interesting Aston Villa, Leicester and Southampton and with a valuation of £12 million having been reported.

Webster, 24, joined the Robins from Town for an initial £3.5 million last summer with the fee potentially rising to £8 million.

The Blues are likely to have a sell-on of 10 per cent included in that deal which, depending on how many top-ups have been paid already, could bring in up to £850,000, although Portsmouth would be due 20 per cent of anything the Blues receive as a result of their sell-on from the 2016 move.

Meanwhile former left-back Tyrone Mings is expected to move on from AFC Bournemouth with his former loan club Aston Villa the favourites to sign him with a fee of £15 million - potentially yielding Town up to another £700,000 via a 10-per-cent-of-profit sell-on - having been widely reported.

Ex-striker Kieffer Moore, now with Barnsley, is also believed to be interesting Bristol City with a 10-per-cent-of-profit sell-on also understood to have been part of the deal which saw the 26-year-old move to Oakwell for £750,000 in January 2018.


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positivity added 18:18 - Jun 18
820k's nice, but 3.9 million would have been much better! wonder how much marriott's worth now...
7

Len_Brennan added 18:19 - Jun 18
How, in the name of all that is sacred, was Clarke allowed to be valued at £50k in the first place? Always regarded as having a decent future ahead of him.
9

Suffolkboy added 18:40 - Jun 18
Negotiating the sale fee,allowing for our then current needs,is tricky and agreeing a sell on profit proportion is a very refined judgement ; so though I'm sorry ,and was at the time, that Clarke moved on ,the acquisition of Webster was excellent business !
What most of these new moves clearly demonstrates is that MM and his staff were excellent judges ,BUT appear to have consistently had the ground cut from under their feet !
In this respect ,if my supposition is correct, it very clearly shows how totally inadequate were not only ME but his closest henchmen at the club: IF we'd retained some of theses players just maybe the hope of Premiership football would have been very much closer !
BUT most recently PH was shown to be totally unintelligent and inadequate in Management and managed to get rid of our goal scorers !
Again we've certainly to thank MM for DMc ,Waghorn and Garner ,and for making swift money out of Moore .
Unless ME can sort out his brain life will continue to be difficult ,but maybe he will sell to people with a better grasp of how to conduct footballing business !
Whatever , COYB
3

HighgateBlue added 18:43 - Jun 18
Losing Clarke was fine, because we have Adam Webster!

Oh...
2

BlueandTruesince82 added 18:55 - Jun 18
Webster is a v good defender.... sadly he was injury prone. Wish we kept a fit Clarke. Hope all the moves come off. Every penny counts atm
8

ActionMan added 19:03 - Jun 18
People still describing these moves as excellent business. We're in the third division sadly, thats an example of a lot of bad business being done over the last decade and the leadership at the club has clearly been poor. A good bit of business would have been retaining Clarke, signing Webster anyway for more money and retaining both players long term and with it our league status. Instead we've made terrible decisions in regards to personnel and we've ended up with expected outcome, relegation, which everyone will agree is terrible business for the club despite how its being glossed over at the moment hence why we're desperate for such as small % of money to come in. Short termism does not work.
16

norfolkbluey added 19:05 - Jun 18
This has been the story of ITFC. Sell cheaply all our best players and end up in the third tier of football and it seems to be escalating. Soon we will be unable to retain anyone with talent. Sad times. Last season epitomised our current way of of business dealings. Sometimes I just want to weep at the talent we have allowed to pass through our books.
Perhaps PL can change that this season and start retaining our talent and build on it rather than throw it away for a pittance.
4

ArnieM added 19:07 - Jun 18
I'd say this is astute business by Town . We'll be getting in something like £3m+ Which is much needed once I our first season League One for many a year ad ha I come with help reduce the
£9m shortfall. Just nee to offload Bart's massive wages now.
0

positivity added 19:19 - Jun 18
mm wasn't that "excellent" a judge getting rid of marriott and clarke! keane wasn't much better with rhodes...
1

brittaniaman added 19:23 - Jun 18
Well Bart is still here at the moment ArnieM, so that means we have 4 goalkeepers on our books ?? it will be strange if they all report for pre-season next Monday
0

Ipswichbusiness added 19:38 - Jun 18
We are at least one good central defender short. Meanwhile, three which we sold off (I understand that Villa played Mings at centre-back) are going for very fancy prices. Will the fees be spent on a good centre-back? I think that we all know the answer to that!
0

midastouch added 19:45 - Jun 18
Hope we also put a sell-on clause for Simon Clegg as I could see his market value going up considerably over the course of the next few seasons.
0

midastouch added 19:47 - Jun 18
And if we still have 4 goalkeepers on our book at the start of pre-season then goalkeeper training might feel a bit like a WWF (or WWE as it is now) Royal Rumble! My money would be on Holy to win that one!
0

algarvefan added 20:04 - Jun 18
It's no good making any money that won't be re-invested in new players!!
1

Michael101 added 20:13 - Jun 18
Kching!! 2mil for even,s back pocket .happy days.
0

PortmanTerrorist added 20:20 - Jun 18
Maybe playing kids is not so mad after all. Shame Mick was so obsessed with preserving his career rather than furthering those within our academy.
0

Bluearmy_81 added 23:20 - Jun 18
Sums up everything bad about Town's ownership. No, not good business, you'd have to be a total re@#)ard to think that in hindsight. Good business is building a team good enough to go up into the prem, end of, not asset stripping our best players to the point that relegation to the third tier was virtually inevitable
2

tractorboybig added 07:03 - Jun 19
always like him could not understand the webster deal...… unfortunately an indictment of the owner and managers of this club
0

norfolkbluey added 07:16 - Jun 19
Yes I am very sad to see a great deal of our former players young and older being sold off but looking at our closest rivals they seem to be doing really well after selling their best players. Sadly it does look like their management set up is much better than ours these days.
We have to take the small positives from these scraps that we are getting but please ME invest this money on the team where it is desperately needed down the spine of the team.
1

rabbit added 08:28 - Jun 19
Hind sight is a truly wonderful thing but totally unrealistic and in any walk of life you cannot look back but hopefully going forward you learn.
As for asset stripping!! not quite sure where that comes in, you really do need to look up the definition, because if you are right then ITFC will be without an owner or backer very shortly!!
-1

braveblue added 08:30 - Jun 19
A litany of ME failures above. And he has managed to lead us into a position where none of the sell ons will be reinvested. What a disaster this incompetent man has been for our club.
0

BlueBlood90 added 09:07 - Jun 19
It seemed absolutely ridiculous giving Matt Clarke away as part of the Webster deal at the time. Even more so now! It was pretty clear he was a talent. Just about sums up our appalling transfer business with our youth players over the past 10 years.
2

Fatboy added 09:14 - Jun 19
The fact that Webster is reportedly currently valued at £12M and Clarke at £3.9M suggests that the deal to bring Webster to the club was a good one (and Portsmouth wouldn't have allowed Webster to leave without Clarke going in the other direction). I'm not sure the same can be said of allowing Webster to leave without a suitable replacement.
1

Steve_ITFC_Sweden added 09:28 - Jun 19
It would be a statement of intent if at least one wodge of these monies could be spent on a promising player, n'est-ce pas?
2

Bluearmy_81 added 10:56 - Jun 19
Sorry rabbit I forget Evans is marvellous, he has been extremely successful in his 11 years here and we should all be grateful he exists. Maybe you could start a cult up? You use the word 'backer?!' That's hilarious. Sir Bobby told him to back the manager and ME has the front to say he followed Bobby's advice when very clearly he has done anything but. If the last few years is MEs idea of backing the manager I'd hate to see him go tight!!
1


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