I was just reading the forums re Ngog's move to Bolton for any financial information I could find. Got me thinking about the whole "undisclosed fee" thing in general.
Whilst I can understand a lot of the logic in wanting to keep such things away from the media, I don't understand clubs NOT wanting to agree on non-disclosure.
The 35million we spent on a deal in the last window is a case in point......
Anyone know how much we got for Ngog?
Nicked the following from wiki:
When a player leaves a club for an undisclosed fee, it simply means that the transfer fee will not be made public by either party. So for whatever reason the 2 clubs have, or perhaps the player and the agent have, they don't want anyone to know how much money a player has been sold or brought for.
There are several, pretty straight-forward answers to why the transfer fee may be undisclosed. The main reason is that the buying club doesn't want anyone to know how much they have just spent on a player. Perhaps this is because they don't want to be subjected to extra pressure from the fans or media - they may have spent a large figure on an unknown player, and they don't want to have the clubs fans on the player (or the manager's) back from day one. By making the transfer fee undisclosed, no-one knows exactly how much money the club may have wasted on their new signing.
It seems that the majority of undisclosed fees occur in transfers in the Premiership, and this may be because the pressure is so much greater in that league, muchly due to the input of the media and the club fans. Managers don't want to put too much pressure on their new signing by allowing everyone to know the exact transfer fee involved, especially considering the Premier League is seen as one of the hardest Leagues to adapt to. The player could do without that added pressure, and if the manager is new or worried about the status of his job then he may be shooting himself in the foot by disclosing the fee.
Another obvious reason that the transfer fee may be undisclosed is that the club which is selling may again be worried by the media and fans reaction to the fact that they have just sold a player for £1 million when they paid £4 million for him just 2 seasons ago. The media would jump on the bad-business made by the club, and so would the fans of that club, who have just seen their team, waste £3 million. The club would therefore rather make the transfer fee undisclosed, so that no-one else knows how much money they mave have lost.
Sometimes this can work both ways. For example, a club may be delighted with their latest signing, who they feel they have signed on a very low price. However, the club selling may choose not to make the fee public, due to making a loss on that player. Although the buying club would have loved to make the figure public, the selling club may insist that the deal only goes through if the fee is undisclosed. This would obviously upset the buying club, but as that was made part of the deal then the buying club will have to follow-suit, or risk the transfer collapsing. Usually a few weeks down-the-line the transfer fee will be mysteriously leaked to the press by the buying club, although this could ruin the relationship between those two clubs.