Recently Norwich City were involved in complicated transfer negotiations with Peterborough United regarding their star striker Craig McKail-Smith. That sentence alone may lead to confusion, because the transfer window closed at the end of January. However, the loan window remained open until as recently as this Thursday. But loan deals should not be complicated and at no point should transfer fees be discussed.
A problem may present itself when the parent club doesn’t really want to loan the player out. When this happens a transfer may effectively be agreed with the player joining initially on loan. Sometimes these types of deals are called loans with a view to a permanent transfer, but more often than not the transfer has already been agreed.
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The situation is understandable from the parent club, but why should the club getting the loan player in be committed to signing that player for a set fee in the summer? This appeared to be what Peterborough were attempting to engineer. The fact is they very nearly managed to do it, but they decided to up their demands at the last minute and the deal was off. That level of greed may come back at them, because the player’s contract is up in summer 2012 and they may end up selling for a small fee this summer.
I can’t help thinking that a loan deal should always be a loan deal and nothing more; if deals like this continue to be made then the name may have to be changed from emergency loan window to covert transfer window. It appears though that there can sometimes be a get out clause and an example of that would be Shola Ameobi’s proposed move to Stoke. When Stoke were still a Championship club Shola arrived on loan and the transfer was said to agreed, but in the summer the deal was called off. In many ways this is a concept behind some loan deals and it can be a try before you buy opportunity. There is really no need for commitment beyond the length of the loan.
The fact of the matter is a player should either be available for loan or not and transfers should not be arranged until the summer. There is also the argument that a player should not be allowed to join a club on loan, if they are already due to join that same club when the transfer window opens. Loan deals can be complicated enough with loan fees and portion of wages for transfer agreements to be included as well.
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