There’s three types of loan deal

No option to purchase, which is basically when a bigger club wants one of their youngsters to get more game time than they are at the parent club

Option to purchase, sometimes a try before you buy sometimes just a sticking plaster…I think Sterling was in the latter category

Obligation to purchase, which was what we had with Raya where we clearly wanted to sign him outright but wanted to shunt the actual purchase onto next year’s books.


Mathys Tel, The Dopey Irish boy from Brighton, Vlahovic etc all been touted as options on loan. I suspect all would come with option to buy…although who knows maybe we don’t want to be obligated into buying is why we haven’t sealed the deal with them