PETERBOROUGH will have to wait FOUR YEARS to receive the money owed to them following Ivan Toney’s £40million transfer from Brentford to Al-Ahli.
The England international, 28, had been heavily linked with a Premier League move to Arsenal, Manchester United or Chelsea, but ended up penning a Deadline Day move with the Saudi club.
It is understood Peterborough, who sold Toney for £6m in 2020, are due around £4m thanks to a sell-on clause involved in his move to West London.
They will then reportedly have to pay around £1m of that to another of his former clubs, Newcastle.
However, Peterborough chairman Darragh MacAnthony has claimed the League One side do not expect the full payment until around 2028.
He told talkSPORT: “The Ivan Toney deal is done. Did we earn the millions we thought we would a year ago or 18 months ago? No.
“We’re going to have to wait like four years to get paid, it wasn’t in sterling, it was in euros believe it or not, so by the time I got the deal sheet yesterday, looking at it I actually expected it was going to be along those lines.
“I was never overly excited come the deadline. I didn’t actually think he was going to go, so I’d written that off about a week ago.
“The lack of interest from other clubs and the whole Saudi thing and the fella from Napoli [Victor Osimhen linked with Al-Hilal] I thought ‘you know what this is probably going to go one way’ and that would be him being sold for a pittance in January.
“Something was better than nothing, but I think the gold bullions that everyone thinks we made, I think we’ve got to wait four years for the money over time.
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“It is what it is, it’s another nice bit of business by our football club and we move on.”
Peterborough signed Toney from Newcastle in 2018 for just £350,000.
He scored 49 goals and assisted 15 in 94 games for Posh across a two-season spell.
After joining Brentford, he bagged 72 goals in 141 matches for The Bees and has earned six caps for England.
He played a cameo role for Gareth Southgate‘s men at the Euros as they made it all the way to the final.
But interim boss Lee Carsley did not include him in his first squad for the Three Lions’ upcoming Nations League games against Republic of Ireland and Finland.