Well that's a different issue. Rightly or wrongly our current model is to buy players, mostly young players who we can buy relatively cheaply and sell of at a good profit, having developed them. In order to get the best money when moving them on we need to have them on long contracts. If we get a reputation amongst developing players that we sign them on long contracts and then hinder their development by not selling them, when there ability / ambition outgrows the clubs, then we will not attract those players in the first place. It could be that the agreement, assuming there was one, was a condition of him signing the 4 year deal in the first place.