Portsmouth facing financial frustration due to terms of Middlesbrough transfer agreement

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·24 August 2022

Portsmouth facing financial frustration due to terms of Middlesbrough transfer agreement

Portsmouth will not receive any windfall from Middlesbrough‘s signing of Matt Clarke, a report from The Portsmouth News has revealed.

Initially joining Portsmouth on loan from Ipswich in the summer of 2015, Clarke spent the next four years four years at Fratton Park, before moving to Brighton in 2019.

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The centre back has since struggled to establish himself at The AMEX, spending much of his time on loan elsewhere.

Now though, the 25-year-old is set for a permanent move away, with it being reported that he is close to joining Middlesbrough for a fee of around £2.25million.

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However, it seems that will not provide any financial benefit to Portsmouth, that those associated with the League One club may have been hoping for from this deal.

According to this latest update, Portsmouth will not be receiving any sort of a sell-on fee for the deal, due to the fact that the fee Middlesbrough are paying Brighton, is lower than the £4million Pompey received from the sale of the centre back to the Premier League club.

As a result, no clause in that deal will be activated, leaving Portsmouth without any sort of windfall from the move.

The Verdict

This will obviously be a frustrating update for those of a Portsmouth persuasion.

Any sort of windfall from a deal for a former player is going to be welcomed by a club, given the boost it could give them either in the transfer market, or in terms of paying the costs needed to keep going.

However, that looks as though it will not be happening here, something which would seemingly have been rather different, had Clarke been able to make an impression at Brighton.

Given the potential he has shown, it is perhaps a surprise that has not happened, and the centre back will no doubt now be desperate to put that right at Middlesbrough.