'I've heard': Finance expert now shares what he believes to be the figure Man United paid for Dan Ashworth
The PSR deadline day scramble was an absolute farce in every sense of the word as Newcastle United and several other clubs made ridiculous deals to avoid a potential points deduction.
Indeed, yesterday we found out that it was very likely that Newcastle paid Nottingham Forest £20million for goalkeeper Odysseas Vlachodimos as part of the quasi-swap deal that saw Elliot Anderson go the other way. Vlachodimos will be Newcastle's number two goalkeeper behind first-choice Nick Pope, for whom they paid just £10million for two years ago.
As well as the Anderson/Vlachodimos deal, Newcastle also sold promising youngster Yankuba Minteh one year after signing him from Danish side OB Odense. The 19-year-old hadn't even trained with the club before he was shifted on for £33million to Brighton.
While all this was going on, Newcastle and Manchester United came to an agreement over the compensation fee for Dan Ashworth and the sporting director was released from his garden.
Man United fans still think they got the better of Newcastle
We still don't know exactly how much the clubs agreed on with fans fighting on X over who got the better of the deal despite knowing next to nothing about it.
However, finance expert Stefan Borson has told Football Insider what he's been hearing from his sources, and it does seem like Man United won this one - in terms of finances anyway, they clearly lost overall because they've got Dan Ashworth now and we've got Paul Mitchell. That's us winning right there.
“There is quite a lot of rumour and counter rumour about how much Newcastle settled for in the end on Ashworth. I did hear one source say to me the fee was as low £3million.
“I’ve heard that it was well below £10million and nowhere near some of the numbers that have been rumoured.
“At the end of the day, Newcastle were over a barrel as they admitted last week. The CEO Darren Eales admitted that it was very close at the last minute in terms of PSR.
“I don’t think they were in a very good negotiating position at the death, so I suspect United did a decent deal.”
We're counting it as a win for Newcastle
Whatever the fee was it has worked out well for Newcastle because it was costing the club money keeping him penned in to tend to his rose bushes and his presence at the club made it more difficult to sign Paul Mitchell. It was no coincidence that his appointment moved so quickly after Ashworth left.
Newcastle avoided a potential points deduction and getting shot of Dan Ashworth was part of that, so however you look at it, it was a good move.
We were never realistically going to get £20million for him, when the current record compensation for a staff member was just over £3million ... held by us ... for Dan Ashworth.
