Cambridge United director Gary Harwood promised to give the club's point of view on the sale of Martin Butler and this afternoon he posted a frank statement on the U's Net message board that has drawn admiring comments from supporters of rival clubs at the continuing openness demonstrated by Cambridge United.

He wrote:

Martin Butler has decided to sign for Reading FC. Both Roy McFarland and the Club Directors believe that players should be made aware of all serious interest in them by other clubs. If the Club does not keep them informed their 'agent' certainly will which would then result in a de-motivated player. Martin (Butts) was no exception to this and he was kept informed, by Roy, of all interest in him by other clubs.

In reality only two serious, firm offers for Butts were received - there had been many enquiries that all led to nothing, except for one offer from a certain, un-named London club who valued Butts at something less than 50% of the fee both Reading and Preston offered. Any player is only worth what someone is prepared to pay. We can all think that Butts should be worth more (and that includes the other Club directors and me) but he clearly is not or else we would have been offered more. CUFC did not set the transfer fee - we listened to offers made and negotiated those offers up as high as we could. If you want to sell your house or car (regardless of what your neighbours may have sold their house or car for) you would get the best price you could from all those interested in buying. Unless of course you decided to wait and see if someone else came along later with a higher bid. So why didn't we wait?:

1. It had been well known in the market for several months that Butts was potentially for sale and the so called big clubs were not interested.

2. Transfer deadline is fast approaching - mid March.

3. Butts only had one further year left on his current contract and he was not interested in either renewing or extending his contract with CUFC. (To be fair why would he be prepared to do so as he knew he could earn many times as much by joining another club?)

4. If he had not been sold before mid March he would most probably have become a free agent at the end of his contract under the Bosman ruling. Clubs would wait to sign him and (possibly equally true if not more likely) he would wait so that his signing on fee could be enormous, as there would be no transfer fee to be paid between the clubs.

5. The first seven months of our financial year (June 1999 to January 2000) have produced losses of £350,000 and this has stretched the Club to its borrowings limit. We might possibly have struggled to pay our staff at the end of March and, had that happened, all of our players would have become free agents! The sale of Butts now gives the Club the funds it needs to ensure we survive into next season.

6. Had we refused to accept either Reading's or Preston's offers to transfer Butts how would Butts have reacted? He told the Club he wanted a move. Both of these clubs would pay him substantially more than he could ever earn at CUFC. It is likely that, at Reading (who offered him better personal terms than Preston I am led to believe), he could earn more than six times as much as he would with us. If we had blocked this in any way I am sure you can work out what would probably have happened. If you were offered a job by another employer which would pay you six times as much (and in the longer term probably a lot more) than your current employer could pay you and you were blocked - how would you feel and what would you do?

The Club had no choice but to sell Butts once two acceptable offers had been received. Where he went was his choice as the two clubs had offered CUFC the same transfer fee. He chose Reading. Naturally we would have been a lot happier had he chosen Preston but we could not force him to do so. Clearly selling to a relegation rival is not done out of choice but, without selling him, we might not have survived to even take part in a relegation fight. I know a lot of fans will find all this hard to believe but :

· I am an honest man,
· I think I am a reasonably smart (excuse the pun) businessman,
· I understand how football works (especially off the field),
· I sincerely believe that this transfer was done in the best interests of the Club.

Some people have said that the Board is showing no ambition. What a load of nonsense that is. Our primary ambition is to stay in business. Our secondary ambition is to stay in Division Two. Our third ambition is to gain promotion to the First Division and stay there. As with all businesses there are ups and downs and difficult decisions have to be taken. This was one of those difficult decisions. If only there had been another way - but there was not!

Finally there has been a lot of speculation about the immediate future of Trevor Benjamin. Everything in life has a price, even Trev, but now the Club is secure again we do not need to sell in the immediate future. Trev is, therefore, with us at least to the end of this season, as if he were to go before then, it would have to be by mid March (transfer deadline). An offer we could not refuse in that timescale would have to be well into £ millions. I do not believe such an offer will be received. I have been asked to publicly tell the fans what the Board's and Roy's valuation of Trevor is. That would not be commercially sensible but I can say that if he goes in the next few weeks CUFC would dramatically break its transfer-received record.

I hope that this statement has clarified what has happened and why. The Club's Board members are all fanatical CUFC fans and do not transfer the Club's best players just for fun, for the hell of it or to line anyone's pockets.

Gary Harwood
Director - Cambridge United FC