For Nottingham Forest, the move would represent a 185% profit on a player signed just two years ago, whilst Manchester City would land one of English football’s best up-and-coming midfielders.
For Newcastle United, however, the deal serves as a painful reminder of their 2024 PSR panic.
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Do Newcastle have a sell-on clause?
(Image credit: Michael Regan – The FA/The FA via Getty Images)
While it is standard practice for clubs to insert 10–20% sell-on clauses when offloading high-ceiling academy graduates, the unique and pressurised context of Anderson’s St James’ Park departure stripped Newcastle of any negotiating leverage.
Newcastle needed to maximise their pure profit gain from an academy graduate when selling Anderson and were under time constraints to do so, requiring the highest possible up-front fee to balance the books before the looming PSR deadline.
Elliot Anderson during his time at Newcastle (Image credit: Stu Forster/Getty Images)
Newcastle were facing a significant breach of the Premier League’s Profit and Sustainability Rules (PSR), which carried the immediate threat of a points deduction.
Due to the fact Newcastle needed every last bit of the reported £35m fee to count toward their 2024 financial health check, they were forced to sacrifice the, occasionally lucrative, kicker clauses which usually protect a selling club.
Head coach Eddie Howe even admitted earlier this season that Newcastle’s bargaining position was ‘non-existent.’
It is for this reason Newcastle are expected to miss out on a potential £10m-£15m windfall this summer, because it appears the club do not have a sell-on clause that would entitle them to a portion of the fee which Forest are expected to receive.
The Anderson deal was further complicated by the arrival of goalkeeper Odysseas Vlachodimos from Forest for £20m in a separate but linked transaction. This was in effect a swap deal designed to help both clubs navigate PSR hurdles.
By inflating the up-front prices of both players, the clubs helped each other’s immediate accounting needs but left no room for the long-term clauses that clubs use to generate passive income from former players.
In short, Newcastle stand to earn nothing from Anderson’s anticipated move to the Etihad Stadium which, when all is said and done, is a bitter pill for the Magpies to swallow.