‘Please Consider If Any Fraud Has Taken Place’ – Mayor Of Liverpool Asks Police To Investigate Ross Barkley’s £15m Move To Chelsea

Chris Wright

10th, January 2018

3 Comments

Photo: @ChelseaFC/Twitter

The Mayor of Liverpool, Joe Anderson, has asked the police to investigate Ross Barkley’s recent £15million move from Everton to Chelsea as he believes the machinations of the delayed transfer may well be fraudulent.

Anderson (an Everton supporter, it should be noted) has also written to the FA and the Premier League to express his concerns after seeing Barkley’s market value fall from £35million in the space of four months.

The disgruntled Mayor originally outlined his grievances in a series of Tweets…

Anderson’s bases his contention on the slightly flimsy assertion that “Barkley is worth at least £50million in today’s market” and that Everton fans have been “ripped off” by him leaving for a penny less.

The Telegraph have now published an excerpt from the aforementioned letter:

At best this represents a very poor deal for Everton Football Club. At worst it could be seen as a deliberate attempt to drive down a player’s value in the transfer market so as to benefit [others].

I am so concerned about the circumstances surrounding this transfer that I am asking the appropriate police authorities to consider whether any fraud has taken place.

It’s fairly simple, Joe. Back in September, Chelsea offered £35million for a fit Barkley who still had a year left on his contract despite having expressed his desire to move on.

He then suffered a hamstring injury that required surgery and prevented him for playing for the next four months, and all the while his contract was ebbing away.

Indeed, the midfielder was just five months from becoming a free agent when Chelsea returned to the bartering table in January with a £15million offer, representing a fairly generous valuation of Barkley considering his circumstances. It’s how the market works, fundamentally.

Perhaps of more interest is The Times having since garnered that as well as the £15million transfer fee, Barkley’s agents, the Wasserman company, have pocketed around £7million in admin fees, which represents an almost 50 percent premium.

For the record, the FA advise that agent fees should not comprise any more than three percent of any final transfer value.

No wonder nobody else was interested in doing business.

Posted in Chelsea, Everton, Transfers & Rumours

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3 Comments

  1. Si says:

    This concerns a commercial transaction between consenting parties who are entitled to agree what they want. The Mayor has no jurisdiction over the transaction and should keep his nose out, especially given some of the questionable spending of Liverpool’s own public funds. What a publicity-hungry douchebag.

  2. Beano says:

    Scousers gonna scouse.

Leave a Reply to Beano