Redknapp now admits Ba release clause talk was guff.
Posted on January 10th, 2012 | 84 Comments |
The droopy featured North London manager has now admitted that neither he nor anyone else apart from Newcastle United and Ba himself know what the figure is (if, indeed, there is a figure at all).
Originally, when Redknapp was asked if the figure was £10 million, as claimed by well known bastion of truth and justice, The Daily Mail, the floppy chopped gaffer responded:
“I think you will find it is a lot less than that.”
When asked if the figure was even lower, less than £7 million, he continued:
“Even less than that.”
Now, the saggy supremo, who is facing a court case for two counts of tax evasion this month, has changed his story. Speaking in another interview, Redknapp is now saying that the only people who would know the true figure are Newcastle United and the player himself. Here are his latest revised utterances on the imbroglio:
“I keep hearing conflicting stories about how much the buy-out clause is, one person says one figure, another says he can be bought out for X amount. The only ones who know are Newcastle and Demba Ba.”
Of course, it was Redknapp who originally alleged that there was a release clause in Ba’s current three year contract with Newcastle United, which I covered in this story. This was agreed after the striker took advantage of a release clause in his previous contract with West Ham, which allowed him to leave when the East London club were relegated from the Premiership last season.
This could beg the question: If ‘Arry was just spouting guff about the fee required to trigger a release clause, how much of the rest of it was just speculative guff too? The club hve neither confirmed or denied the presence of the clause, merely stating that they do not comment on such matters, though Toon’s Silver Supremo, Alan Pardew, commented on Redknapp’s original remarks:
“I thought, listening to the conversation, that the media tripped him up a little bit, Harry,” Pardew said. “You don’t want to end up talking about other players in the transfer window and I am sure he probably regrets that a little bit.
“He’s a Newcastle player, he has been brilliant for us and that’s all I want to say, really.”
One would have thought that the club would have made a categoric denial if there was no substance whatsoever to the allegations. However from the other side, there has yet to be any real substantiation of them at the time I write this piece.
NUFCBlog Author: workyticket
workyticket has written 1093 articles on this blog.
He is a wag old H! He certainly got you lot jumpin’ ;-o