Danny Mills believes there’s somewhat of an ulterior motive behind Allan Saint-Maximin’s brand new deal worth a reported £70,000 per week.
The unpopular pundit claims the club are only looking to protect their asset with the massive contract so that other clubs a forced to pay a hefty fee for the winger if and when serious interest arrives.
Here’s what he had to say in full to Football Insider:
“He’s done very, very well because he’s exciting and offers something different.
“What happens is that other clubs start to go ‘Ooh, let’s have a little look, we quite like him, I think he might suit us.’
“Newcastle have been quite clever and thought ‘Right, let’s tie him down, let’s get it done and dusted and then if somebody does want to buy him and take him away from us then we’ve got a very valuable asset’ because he’s been tied down for a long-term period.”
It’s probably a fair assessment by Mills – even if news of an extension and well deserved pay rise for our star man was still good news.
If we’re honest, we all know the big clubs will come calling eventually – even if we don’t really want to admit it.
This way, the club will at least have the ability to put up some sort of financial fight by quoting a large fee for the 23-year-old, not that there’ll be a single Mag out there who’d like to entertain the idea of him leaving at any price!
Saint-Maximin signing a new improved six-year deal and his comments that followed suggests he does want to play for us long term, however I’m sure we’ll all agree that our ambition must exceed ‘survival’ if we’re to keep a player of his talent for many years to come.
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What do you mean, “he wants to play for us”. Whats he meant to say after a hefty pay rise. Wait till a big club comes calling, it will be bye bye. Off like a rat through an aqueduct.
Garry Wallace(Quote)
he will not want to play in the championship,cause thats where we are headed with that complete numpty of a head coach mind you thats only a title as he is certainly no coach hes a complete and utter p*llock and thats putting it politely
kev the mag(Quote)
Doesn’t make a lot of sense considering he was already on a six year contract with five years left.
A few years ago they might calculate a player’s value by looking at how many years he has left and taking it from there, but these days newer players have release clauses in their contracts.
To renegotiate after only a year tells us 3 things.
1 ASM has had more of an impact than we thought he was going to have, and there has already been interest from mid to bottom half clubs who would pay him more. We would simply not be able to compete with the top 6 so they aren’t the ones we are trying to protect him from.
2 We have given him a new contract because his occasional quality performances have suggested we can ramp up the release clause by another 10 – 20 million
3 He has agreed to the increase in release clause in exchange for a huge increase in salary.
We know from the club’s dealings with Matty Longstaff that they don’t just give money away to their players.
Otherwise it just doesn’t make sense to give him a six year contract just one year into a six year contract.
JFA127(Quote)