Eckersley Fee Less Than We Hoped For

Richard Eckersley joined Burnley at the start of the season, following in the footsteps of another United youth product, Chris Eages. He made just four appearances for United and left with the hope of more first team action.

However, it hasn’t entirely gone to plan so far, with the 20-year-old finding himself sent off on his Burnley debut in September and has only played twice since, both in cup games.

His brother, Adam, left a year earlier for Port Vale on a free after playing just once for the first team but we were hoping to get a fee in the region of £1 million for Richard.

“The outcome is satisfactory,” said Paul Fletcher. “When the smallest club in the league tries to take on the biggest club in the league you always wonder how it’s going to end up. But we thank the tribunal for taking a common sense approach to this. We have always valued the player around the £300,000 mark until he starts establishing himself in the first-team. When Manchester United were asking a million-plus we thought we had to stand up and be counted and that’s what we did. The tribunal was represented by administrators of the Premier League who have hopefully seen the common sense of the way Burnley tries to run its business with sensible numbers, rather than allowing ourselves to get into financial difficulties further down the line.”