Former Manchester City manager Stuart Pearce has revealed why the club had to sell Shaun Wright-Phillips to Chelsea back in 2005.
After spending nine years at the Manchester club, Wright-Phillips was sold to Chelsea in the 2005 summer transfer window for a fee of £21m.
The winger spent three years at Stamford Bridge before making a return to the Manchester club for £9m.
Now though, the manager who had to deal with this departure at the time has now shed some light on what the behind-the-scenes issues were concerning this particular transfer deal.
Pearce says City had to sell Wright-Phillips to keep the club running
Speaking on talkSPORT, Pearce had this to say about the situation that led to City selling Wright-Phillips to Chelsea.
He said: “When I was Manchester City manager, I’d managed nine matches at the end of the season, I was acutely aware of the financial situation of the football club, as in it was bust, to be quite honest with you.
“I think two weeks before the season started, the chief executive called me in and said ‘Look, we’ve had an offer, £21m will be paid in cash on Monday morning from Chelsea and if you don’t sell him we’ll go bust as a football club.’
“Now I knew before we had that conversation that if I was put in this situation the club come before me or the chief executive or anybody, the club has to still keep standing.
“But the important thing for me was to get the message out there of the expectation, don’t buff it up with the supporters, just say look this is where we’re at at the moment, we have no money as a football club, we’ve had to sell [Nicolas] Anelka six month ago, we sold Shaun Wright-Phillips but the club has to remain standing and has to be a Premier League club.”
Across both spells with the Citizens, the Englishman made 274 appearances across all competitions, scoring 48 goals and delivering 23 assists along the way.
In 125 games with Chelsea, Wright-Phillips found the back of the net 10 times and provided 18 assists, lifting a Premier League, FA Cup and League Cup in the process.
If the financial situation at the club was as severe as Pearce said it was at the time, then selling Wright-Phillips was definitely the right decision to make, especially since it could have played a part in the 2008 takeover by Sheikh Mansour.
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