Ba wants to double his wages- eyeing the exit?

Its highly relevant. If its not known (impossible in the world of football - look at us with Cabaye) then I'm sure he would say nothing. But he is not naive enough to think that. They'd already been made to look foolish once by Redknapp, why let it happen again. Refreshing their memory? Yeah because clubs suddenly forget about players from one window to the next, particularly when they are one of the leagues top scorers.

Just the way it goes. Big clubs circle, he looks to move to make more money and have more chance of winning something. No big deal really. Certainly a shame because he is a good player but once Ashley agreed to the clause, the hands are tied from there.

 

The whole problem was Ashley agreeing to the clause.
It must have been a deal breaker cos as wouldn't per se agree to these kind of things with routine contracts.
What makes it all the more baffling is that Ba had injury concerns at the time which surely should weaken the players hand.

 

Indeed. I was surprised to find there was a clause but maybe he had other offers which were financially more rewarding and just fancied playing for Newcastle after we did ok. Maybe his other options were newly promoted club? Who knows but there has to have been some give and take.

I suppose one theory could be that players, regardless of their injury records, never take kindly to being termed injury prone. To be fair to Ba this exploding knee theory has turned out to be a bit of an overeaction to a medical exam. So maybe Newcastle were presenting their case in negotiation and he thought "well if you are going to throw that on the table, I want xyz".

More likely is his agents just took the gamble it was worth forcing this clause in because if he backed up his West Ham form, they were then sitting pretty. If he didn't then nothing lost.