The lad on the bench at a lot of clubs has no idea he’s competing against a clause rather than form. The clause behind it sits in a lot of agreements, and it’s worth understanding how it works before you start before you get involved in loans.
For example: a Premier League club has an 18-year-old on a salary of £10,000 per week. They want him playing 1st team football, so they loan him to a League Two club that can’t get anywhere near that salary. The League Two club pays £2,000 a week and the parent club covers the rest.
But here’s the kicker: For every week the player doesn’t play at least 60 minutes, that contribution jumps to £8,000 or even £10,000. Either figure is completely unaffordable and seriously damaging to the club’s finances.
From a business perspective, it’s a clever structure. The parent club gets its player developed, and the loan club gets a Premier League talent for a fraction of his wage, as long as he plays. When it works, it works brilliantly (and I’ve done a few of these deals), it's what you'd call a win-win.
Except the player who loses out is the League Two lad sitting on the bench, who has no idea he’s competing against a clause, not just another player’s performance. The loan player plays every week, even if he has a stinker. It's confusing as much as it is demoralising.
As well as dips in form, these loan structures can also go badly wrong when nobody writes in an injury exception.
I once negotiated a loan for a player from a Premier League club to a Championship club. The structure was this: the Championship club would contribute £10,000 a week towards his wages, but for any week he didn’t play, they had to pay the full £20,000.
He got injured in his 2nd game with the Championship club. There was no injury exception in the agreement, so from that week on, the club was paying an extra £500,000 for a player that wasn't even able to contribute.
They tried to explain the situation and reason with the Premier League club, but they wouldn’t move on it, to them it was revenue needed for their Financial Fair Play compliance. (and contractually, they were entirely within their rights not to budge).
The irony was that as soon as it became apparent it was a season-long injury, he moved out and went back to his parent club. He spent the rest of the season rehabbing there and living back in London, while the Championship club paid his entire wage, and didn't have a suitable replacement.
💡 Lesson: A properly structured clause would have stopped the contribution the moment he went back. If I were on the club side of that deal, it’s the first clause I’d scrutinise.
