West Ham co-owner David Sullivan has admitted that letting Demba Ba leave the club to join Newcastle was one of the biggest mistakes of his life.
The Senegalese striker has netted 16 goals in 21 appearances for the Tyneside club this season, after being allowed to leave on a free transfer following West Ham’s relegation.
Sullivan has relived the story of Ba’s Upton Park departure, and feels that The Magpies are in danger of losing their star man for a small amount of money also.
“I’m told he’s got a £7m get-out at Newcastle and he gets half the money, so if they sell him for £7m they’ll only net about three,” he said in an interview with the fans’ website West Ham Till I Die.
“Getting £3m is not bad but, for a player of his quality, it’s not fantastic. And Newcastle paid his agent £2m to get him out of here.
“Newcastle keep denying it but I think you’ll see in the summer he will either leave Newcastle or get a monstrous rise to stay there.
“Demba Ba signed a three-and-a-half-year contract with us.
“We had a deal where his salary would be halved if we were relegated and he said, ‘Well, on that basis I have got to be allowed to walk if we get relegated.’ What we should have said was that, if we don’t halve your salary, you haven’t got a get-out. The failure to put that one line in the contract cost us very, very dearly. It’s one of those mistakes that happen but it’s probably one of the worst mistakes I have ever made in my life.
“If he was with us now and his knee had held up, because he did have a very, very bad knee, I think we’d be 15 points clear [in the Championship],” he concluded.
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By Gareth McKnight
