but forcing a player to stay for one more year after they agitate for a move has been standard practice in football for years.

Most notably, it happened with Ronaldo at Man Utd and it happened with Suarez at Liverpool and both of them performed superbly in their final seasons in order to help secure their dream move.

So I think fans who are wishing we'd sold him are projecting their own feelings of misery and doom, when if they were thinking more rationally their overriding feeling would be relief that we've managed to keep one of the best players in the world for an extra season.