9:45pm Friday 15th June 2007
By Andy Naylor
Albion are looking forward to a £280,000 bonus from a dream move for former striker Colin Kazim-Richards - but boss Dean Wilkins will not see a penny of it.
Chairman Dick Knight is ring-fencing the Seagulls' share of the £1.275 million fee Sheffield United will receive from Turkish Champions League contenders Fenerbahce for Kazim-Richards for the Falmer stadium campaign.
Knight negotiated a healthy 25 per cent sell-on clause on any future profit made on Kazim-Richards by the Yorkshiremen when the errant youngster was sold for £150,000 on the final day of the August transfer window.
Kazim-Richards effectively cost Albion nothing when he was bought from Bury a year earlier.
He was signed using some of the £250,000 won for the club by supporter Aaron Berry in a competition run by Coca-Cola.
Knight said: "It means we have grossed for him well over £400,000 which I think is a fair deal.
"I knew he was a capable player, because we'd had him watched a long time before we won the Coca-Cola money.
"Things didn't quite work out for him here but it's a dream move for Colin and it has worked out well for us. It's a windfall that I am very pleased to have been able to get for the club. Good luck to Colin and well done to Sheffield United, because they played him and he has gone up in value.
"Everyone's a winner, certainly Colin is. He is going to play in the Champions League because Fenerbahce won the Turkish Championship."
A decision by Knight to reject Sheffield's bid to buy out the sell-on clause for £125,000 at the end of the season, when the Blades were on the brink of relegation from the Premiership, has also been spectacularly vindicated but the money will not be available to Wilkins for team strengthening ahead of Albion's League One campaign.
Knight said: "We have already allocated a healthy playing budget for this season, in the higher echelons of League One. This money will help to pay for the stadium costs, simple as that.
"All of this money will be allocated to reducing the huge costs of the Falmer project, particularly the legal costs we have been forced to incur in the last few months because of Lewes District Council."
Albion will receive their share of the Kazim-Richards fee on the drip, rather than in one lump sum, as Fenerbahce are paying for him in installments.
The switch to the Sukru Saracoglu Stadium completes an incredible transformation in fortunes for Kazim-Richards, 20. He was in Albion's Reserves after handing in a transfer request when United came in for him.
He made 29 appearances for the Blades and the Londoner, who qualifies to play for Turkey through his mother, made his international debut towards the end of the campaign.
Kazim-Richards was also wanted by Turkey's other top two clubs, Besiktas and Galatasaray. He will be playing for Fenerbahce under former Braziilian legend Zico and alongside world class players like Roberto Carlos, Mateja Kezman and Alex.
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