Sunderland sporting director Kristjaan Speakman has revealed the reasons why the club chose to sell Jack Clarke to Ipswich Town this summer, with the winger making a late transfer window move to Suffolk.
A bid from the Tractor Boys worth £20 million was accepted by the Black Cats, with £15 million of that guaranteed and the rest in add-ons.
The deal was officially announced less than a week before the end of the transfer window, but the Black Cats surprisingly made no moves to replace the 23-year-old before it shut, although Wilson Isidor can play on the left of an attacking unit as he has done in the past.
Speakman, having only initially made a comment on Clarke’s time at the club, has now revealed that they believed they had the players already in the building, specifically Romaine Mundle, to come in and replace what Clarke offered.
This, combined with his contract situation and the likelihood that his value was just going to drop as each window went by, is why they accepted the bid for him, as per one of Sunderland’s key figures.
Kristjaan Speakman speaks out on Sunderland cashing in on Jack Clarke
Speakman further revealed that the offer that they ended up taking from Ipswich was worth less than some of the ones that they received last summer when Burnley heavily pursued the winger.
Given there had been no resolution over his contract situation, his price was always likely to fall, but they did get themselves a 15% sell-on clause as part of the deal.
Speakman told the Sunderland Echo, on the decision to sell Clarke: “First of all, there’s definitely a business element to it and then there’s a player element to it as well.
“So last year we had a significant bid, which was less than the one we accepted this summer, and we basically stopped the player moving.
“Does the player want to play in the Premier League? Yes, but at the same time he was more than happy to continue his journey with us and came back and performed extremely well. When that opportunity comes back up again, I think it’s difficult for the second occasion to say that we’re not going to allow it again.
“It makes it really difficult to sign players like Milan [Aleksic] because if they feel there’s not going to be that opportunity in the future, the talent pathway would soon dry up. So we had to understand where Jack was, what he wanted to do.
“The second bit is the business bit, how competitive we think the offer is and where does it sit for a player whose contract is reducing. It’s the highest package we’d been able to negotiate and we felt it was the right moment to take it.
“I don’t think we get anywhere near that value next summer or the following January. And then you have to consider, as I say, the player pathway, player injury, all those other potential factors.”
Many Sunderland supporters weren’t particularly happy when they saw the fee that their club would get for such a top talent. However, Speakman believes that this offer for the 23-year-old was the best that they were going to get.
“It’s difficult to get into details of the fee, you can never give the full details or the full picture and you don’t want judgements to be made on just bits of the picture.
“On the fee and finance, hopefully supporters trust that we’re good enough at running the club to make the right decision on things like that.
“In terms of why it was the right fee, rightly or wrongly, there was perhaps less interest in Jack than what maybe people perceived on the outside. It was not the situation that we had a large number of clubs sending in offers or making requests to speak to the player.
“So you have to assess the market and where it’s likely to be in future as a result, and then you make the decision on whether it’s the right opportunity.”
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