Doing the accounting analysis: if we paid £15 million (so I have heard recently) to Hull and had the player on a 3 year contract then we booked £5 amortization (i.e. non-cash cost) on the fee last fiscal year. Book value currently at £10. If Burnley pay us £8 then we're £2 in the hole. This excludes anything we paid and owe agents et al. If we made a profit last season then the amortization would have saved us some tax (@19%) of around £950k, which would cut the loss on the player's trading (in/out) to just over £1 million.
Question: when factoring in his payroll cost (whatever that is), given the "value" Clucas can deliver on the field, are we better taking the £1 hit on the net trade, dump his payroll cost, and apply the £8 to acquire a player of better production value with potentially lower payroll.
I think this is the calculus for this transaction .... but of course, if we don't replace with equivalent or better value then we have £8 in the bank and a capital loss of £1 on the books. Money in the bank doesn't kick a ball ... so the acquisition of the replacement determines the final +/-.
