Mark Goldbridge has questioned the structure of Tottenham’s deals for Savinho and Omar Marmoush after suggesting Manchester City may have found a creative way to reduce a payment owed to Eintracht Frankfurt.
The theory emerged as Spurs negotiated two separate transfers with City. Savinho completed a move worth £75 million plus £10 million in potential add-ons, while Marmoush is joining on an initial loan with a purchase package reportedly worth up to £60 million.
Speaking on his general football YouTube channel, That’s Football, Goldbridge said he had been told by a journalist that Frankfurt would receive a percentage of any profit City made above the approximately £59 million originally paid for Marmoush.
That produced a possible explanation for the two valuations.
Goldbridge suggested Spurs could have paid more for Savinho while agreeing a lower figure for Marmoush. The combined expenditure would remain broadly similar, but less money would officially be attached to the player whose former club was supposedly waiting for a percentage.
“Maybe Spurs have overpaid on Savinho to help Man City out by underpaying for Marmoush,” Goldbridge said, before describing what he considered “dodgy, dodgy strange movements of money” in Premier League transfers.
Goldbridge presented the idea as a possibility rather than an established arrangement. The possibility has since encountered one fairly important accounting problem.
Reports now state that Frankfurt do not possess the sell-on clause upon which the theory depended. City are therefore not expected to owe the German club a percentage of Marmoush’s next transfer, removing the apparent incentive to redistribute money between the two deals.
There is no evidence that Manchester City and Tottenham manipulated either fee. Savinho and Marmoush may simply have been assigned valuations which supporters—and Goldbridge—consider surprisingly far apart.
Modern transfer accounting is now complicated enough for two ordinary deals between the same clubs to produce an immediate forensic examination on That’s Football.
In this instance, the suspicious missing money appears to have been accompanied by a missing clause.
