Whichever Barnsley employee insisted on a sell-on fee when John Stones joined Everton deserves a raise.
The England defender has joined Manchester City for a reported £47.5m, and Barnsley’s cut – somewhere between 15 and 20% – guarantees the Tykes a payoff of more than £7m.
Remarkably, that is more than the Yorkshire club have ever received for a player, with the previous record of £4.5m coming from Ashley Ward’s move to Brian Kidd’s Blackburn back in December 1998.
In effect, the club have broken their incoming transfer fee record on a player they don’t even own, and it means that both Barnsley AND Everton have made a record amount on the one deal.
💬 #WelcomeJohn pic.twitter.com/MNWGxQc4i1
— Manchester City (@ManCity) August 9, 2016
The sum paid to Barnsley is higher than the transfer fee for a number of new arrivals in the Premier League this summer.
New Liverpool defender Ragnar Klavan cost the club less than £5m, as did goalkeeper Loris Karius, while Manchester City’s new winger Marlos Moreno – who will link up with Stones next summer after a year on loan in Colombia – was a £4.75m buy.
When you look down to the Championship, meanwhile, only three players have cost more than £7m – Aston Villa’s Ross McCormack and Newcastle United new-boys Dwight Gayle and Matt Ritchie.
Mike Hewitt/Getty Images
We don’t necessarily anticipate Barnsley spending it all in one go, though, even if they are among the favourites to drop down from the second tier.
Their current record buy – Macedonian flop Georgi Hristov – cost them just £1.5m back in 1997.
All in all it’s a great day for Barnsley, made even better by the fact this has all taken place on pie night.
https://twitter.com/BFC_Commercial/status/762650818785017857
What a time to be alive.
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