I am assuming that a clause preventing managers from coming back and reaping the kind of havoc Malky has at our beloved WFC is illegal!!! IF SUCH CLAUSES ARE NOT ILLEGAL, THEN WHY THE **** DID WE NOT INSERT ONE IN THE COMPENSATION PACKAGE NEGOTIATED WITH CARDIFF AND READING :rant::rant::rant: With Reading it might be excused as being a little naive, but surely not doing so with the Cardiff deal, is not far short of criminal :rant: I can understand it when managers come back to their old clubs for players etc. if they have been sacked or come to the end of a contract, as I assume there is nothing a club can do about that. However, when a club is negotiating a deal to release their manager from his contract to allow him to move to another club, surely a clause disallowing that manager to come back and poach players etc. for period of time could be negotiated into that contract :forehead::forehead::forehead: Maybe it can't be done, so please correct me if I am wrong, maybe this is one for you UEA?
Watford had no way of keeping Malky from Cowie as Cowie was out of contract and not employed by Watford! As for the staff we got a good deal as it allowed Dyche to bring in his own people without us having to pay the three who left a severance pay.
I'm pretty sure that this would contravene EU free trade laws - no expert though. For me this is a mess of the clubs making with his original contract; if we stayed up we had to offer him a contract, but there were no terms associated with it. Basically the contract says 'if I'm good, then I won't sign your contract unless you give me a stupid deal, but if I'm rubbish, you are stuck with me for another year' (because we had to offer the contract). Having put ourselves in that situation, there was only ever going to be a bad outcome...
It doesn't immediately seem like a Restraint of Trade. However, the compensation we got for Malky going presumably reflected the whole deal. If we'd demanded some clause to say he couldn't come in for our players, Cardiff might have offered £100,000 rather than £300,000. That said, most employment contracts say you can't disclose confidential business information even after you have left - so what did Mackay tell his bosses when he said go for Cowie, he'll be free/cheap/another?
I was thinking more on the basis that it is illegal (I think) to restrict one persons movements on the basis of anothers. i.e. we would be unfairly preventing a Cowie (or anyone else) moving to Cardiff (if there were a clause that Malky couldn't buy Watford players)? Actually its no issue with Cowie since it seems he was a free agent anyway, hence my comments about his original contract. Agree about the non-disclosure agreement - standard practise, although again, with Cowie out of contract, I'm not sure we gave ourselves any protection there either!
Cowie was no longer contracted to Watford, allowing Malky to take him for free. Now who's fault is that I wonder?
Yeah, the players/staff we were trying to keep could perhaps say that restricts their freedom of movement. The ultimate "fault" if there is any lies with the club generally in either not securing Cowie as was understood to have already happened or trying to sell him before his contract ran down.
Vital Football seem to be thinking along the same lines. http://www.watford.vitalfootball.co.uk/sitepage.asp?a=245970 Whilst I agree with the principle and most of the other points that they have made I'm unsure whether such a clause would have made a difference in regard to Cowie. He was unattached when he signed for Baardiff so would such a clause become irrelevant?
While such clauses aren't illegal, they are ridiculously hard to enforce and any good agent would easily find his way around them.
