- Oct 17, 2008
- 14,501
Good question, the club are never exactly forthcoming with this stuff, but it’s possible - more likely an unenforceable gentleman’s agreement not to join a divisional rival. The problem is with these types of exit agreements is they very often wouldn’t actually hold up if tested in a court of law, because they are usually deemed anti-competitive and restrict freedom of work which is protected by EU legislation.Would the deal to release him from his contract include some sort of agreement that he can't sign for another club within a certain timeframe? Otherwise we might as well just have clung on to him as we'd have got compensation for the outstanding year (?) on his contract.
We’ll almost definitely never know.