Chelsea facing £18.5m bill for former City striker Daniel Sturridge

Posted Friday, January 15, 2010 by theguardian.com

Chelsea facing £18.5m bill for former City striker Daniel Sturridge
Daniel Sturridge has now played eight games since his controversial move from Manchester City last summer.

Chelsea have been left to digest the cost of signing Daniel Sturridge from Manchester City last summer, and it could be as much as £18.5m over the course of the striker's four-year contract.

The London club were ordered by a Premier League-convened tribunal, which was set up to solve the wrangle, to pay £3.5m for Sturridge and a further £3m based on future appearances. The player is on a weekly wage of £60,000, which equates to £12m over four years.

Chelsea must pay £500,000 for every 10 appearances that Sturridge makes for them in all competitions up to a total value of £2m, and an additional £1m if he plays for the England senior team. The 20-year-old has made eight appearances so far and he hopes to enjoy further opportunities while Didier Drogba and Salomon Kalou are away at the Africa Cup of Nations with the Ivory Coast.

Sturridge should make the required 40 appearances to trigger the staggered release of the £2m. At international level, he has four Under-21 caps to date.

City will not pocket all of the windfall. Coventry City are due 10%, having agreed a sell-on clause when Sturridge left their academy in 2003. The player had previously attended Aston Villa's academy.

Coventry can look forward to a dividend of some £350,000, with more to follow. Manchester City will also receive 15% of any sell-on fee if the player moves again.

Chelsea had hoped that the tribunal, which had an independent chairman plus representatives from the Premier League, the Professional Footballers' Association and the League Managers Association, would set the fee at no more than £3m.

Sturridge had spurned City's offer of a new contract and was a free agent when Chelsea signed him. City trained him for six years – he first worked with their first-team group at the age of 15 – and, as such, they were entitled to compensation, but Chelsea argued that the valuation should not be based on the fee that the player would command on the market.

City had wanted at least £5m, and ideally closer to £10m, pointing out that no player at Chelsea who earned £60,000 a week could be worth less. They were happy with the tribunal's decision, particularly the caveat of the 15% sell-on clause while Chelsea, too, professed in public to be satisfied.

"The initial fee is very close to what we first offered," a club spokesman said. "Any subsequent payments are directly linked to the success of the player and that is satisfactory to us."

Sturridge made a total of 32 appearances for City, 12 of them starts, and he scored six goals, five of them in the Premier League. At Chelsea three of his eight appearances have been from the start. He has scored two goals to date, both coming in their last match, the 5-0 FA Cup third round win over Watford.

Carlo Ancelotti, the Chelsea manager, had intended to select Sturridge and partner him with Nicolas Anelka in the Premier League fixture at Hull City last weekend only for the game to be postponed. The player now hopes that Ancelotti will stand by him for the visit of Sunderland on Saturday.

Juliano Belletti believes he can fill the defensive midfield role usually taken by Michael Essien or Mikel John Obi, who are also at the Africa Cup of Nations. "I played there in pre-season in America and I spoke with Carlo after pre-season and said I can help the team, not just as a right-back but also in midfield in the absence of Mikel and Essien. And at this moment in January, the team needs me."