I've thought he was leaving on a free for a long time. While we heard the usual tweets that "we're not too worried" and "there's plenty of time yet", allowing his contract to get to this point is a huge mistake by the club.
Giving him a release clause may allow others to demand the same and that's clearly what we're trying to avoid here but we're going to pay around £40m for that privilege now.
This one has struck me as very strange because of all the things I would have thought FSG would have been protective over it would be avoiding losing an asset for free. It doesn't make sense at all and to me it just seems like both camps were standing in their positions and not budging, the problem being is that Emre's camp had everything to gain in leaving for free, we had everything to lose in financial terms.
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