I'm sure it's probably been mentioned before, but am I right in remembering he had a small sell on % for Bury? If we sell him, with Bury being dissolved, who do we pay the money to?
I'm pretty sure that crazy guy with the weird blog posts bought what remained of the club, and presumably all of its debtors and creditors, so I'd guess him. Edit: Although I suppose the administrators might have approached Barnsley and offered to settle. That would perhaps make sense, if a sell-on clause is generally considered to be an asset. Maybe one of our BBS accountants can advise!
That sort of thing has been known to happen before, yeah. Most notably, when Southampton were in administration, and Spurs bought out Gareth Bale's sell-on clause (it was a nice one, 20 or 25 per cent.) Spurs bought it for a million quid, I think, and then sold Bale to Real for £80million.
Man Utd bought out all of the add-on clauses for Rio Ferdinand. I believe Leeds got far less than the reported £30 million transfer fee.
Bury went in to administration on 27 November 2020. Despite the footballing activities ceasing over a year prior the company only went in to administration last month. This was after a company voluntary agreement was breached. The role of the administrator is to maximise the return to the creditors in a suitable time period. If the administrator believes that there is value in the sell on agreement then it would be normal for the administrator to seek a settlement but this would be a negotiation between the administrator and BFC.
The inevitable sale of Styles (which is hopefully some time away) is probably the best chance for creditors of the "old" Bury to actually get paid. I'm glad that they are in administration though I suspect their odd Chairman has probably ensured he's a preferential creditor after banks and HMRC. I'm sure (with no ITK whatsoever) that there have already been discussions with the administrators and Barnsley Board about the sell on. It makes sense all around.
Apparently Everton tried many times to buy out the John Stones sell-on clause, but luckily we always held firm.
I am reasonably sure there was a news story to the effect that Everton threatened not to sell him unless we accepted about £2m in lieu of the sell-on clause. If there wasn't a news story, then I must've read it on here, I guess. But, as you say, we (quite rightly) refused to budge.