In an exclusive interview with Stuart Watson at the end of the season, Ashton stated agreeing to Delap’s relegation release clause when purchasing him for £15 million from Manchester City was a question of ‘take it or leave it.’ He explained: “Let’s be clear:

when you sign players from a Premier League football club as a freshly promoted Premier League football team, young or old, they’re quite anxious about being locked in a Championship club. Because the statistics suggest that freshly promoted clubs frequently drop back down. Contracts are always highly negotiated.

“The fact is that when a high-profile player is coveted by multiple clubs, you are provided with a term sheet that states, ‘those are the terms for the club’ and ‘those are the terms for the player’. “You’re told, ‘If you want to talk to the player and pitch to sign him, you must agree to those terms because if you don’t, six other clubs will’.

We speak with other clubs, we know the market, and we know those are not lies. “There is very little to negotiate. You either take it or leave it.

“At that moment, our relationships allow us to nibble at the edges of those agreements, to bend and twist them until we reach the best version possible. “That’s a fact. That is just the reality of where you are.

You’ve progressed from a huge fish in a small to medium pond to a giant fish in the Atlantic Ocean.” “So the reality was that we knew for a while that he was going to move, and Chelsea was his final destination.”

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