Sebastian Coates has been linked with a £17m move three years after Sunderland sold the centre-back for around £4.3m.
The former Liverpool defender’s move to the Stadium of Light was typical of the muddled transfer business the Black Cats did under then-owner Ellis Short.
Gustavo Poyet signed his fellow Uruguayan on loan in the 2014 summer transfer window. Despite only nine Premier League starts, the deal became permanent at the end of the season for a reported £2m.
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Shortly after that, Poyet was replaced as manager by Dick Advocaat, and he was a permanent Sunderland player for just six months before Advocaat’s successor, Sam Allardyce, loaned him to Sporting Lisbon to allow him to buy Lamine Kone.
That move became permanent in the next transfer window, in the summer of 2016.
In total Coates made 23 Premier League starts for the Black Cats.
The chopping of changing of managers under Short – 12 supposedly permanent managers in ten years as chairman – led to the constant accumulation of players bought for one coach but unwanted by his successors. Short tried to address it with the appointment of Roberto de Fanti and Lee Congerton as directors of football but to no effect, and by the time he sold the club to Stewart Donald last May, its debts were well into nine figures.
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Coates has impressed in Portugal, and the 28-year-old is now being linked with a move to China or Spain, where Valencia are one of the clubs linked.
The £17m fee mooted is said to be less than half of his buyout figure, but these are often artificial numbers, put into contracts to scare of suitors rather than a realistic starting point for negotiation.
Donald revealed this season that Sunderland did not have a sell-on clause in the club record deal that saw goalkeeper Jordan Pickford move to Everton during Short’s final summer transfer window, and it would be no surprise if the same was true of Coates.
