Liverpool have buy-back option on £70m trio while Manchester City keep tabs on £37.5m summer sales | OneFootball

Liverpool have buy-back options on three players sold for a combined £70m, while Manchester City have the chance to re-sign six alumni.

These are the known active buy-back options Premier League clubs hold over sold players.

Suggestions for other players with buy-back clauses are more than welcome in the comments.

Which players do Aston Villa have a buy-back option on?

Aaron Ramsey A significant knee injury has limited Ramsey to 19 appearances for Burnley since he made his £14m move in August 2023.

“It feels so amazing to be back on the pitch, it feels like a dream,” he said after making a six-minute cameo in the club’s penultimate game of their promotion season.

Unai Emery’s presence has likely contributed to Aston Villa adopting the more European approach of baking buy-back clauses into many a sale, especially those of young, homegrown players whose development could be accelerated by regular minutes elsewhere.

It’s how they made extra money on Cameron Archer and Jaden Philogene, both of whom were re-signed to be sold back on again.

But they will not be cashing in their Ramsey receipt any time soon, although his long-awaited return might prompt them to keep tabs again.

Which players do Chelsea have a buy-back option on?

Diego Moreira It seems fairly pointless for Chelsea to insert a buy-back clause into any sale they make to Strasbourg, a club with whom they share owners and have loaned or transferred 427 players.

But when Diego Moreira was shipped across to France for £1.7m he arrived safe in the knowledge Chelsea at least had an eye on his future progress. They appear to be unmoved by his five goals and nine assists this past season.

Which players do Liverpool have a buy-back option on?

Bobby Clark One of Jurgen Klopp’s 42 children at Liverpool, the son of Lee made waves at Anfield including playing 48 minutes as a substitute in the 2024 League Cup final, before unseating Trent Alexander-Arnold as the club’s youngest European goalscorer and guaranteeing himself a future mural in the process.

Liverpool were loathe to lose Clark but put safeguards in place to ensure they still had a say in his future.

As well as a £10m fee which constituted one of the highest ever paid in Austrian league history, Liverpool got Salzburg to agree to a 17.5% sell-on clause and buy-back option.

Having spent 2025/26 on loan at Derby, it seems unlikely Liverpool will act on their option just yet.

Ben Gannon Doak Liverpool have always enjoyed chucking buy-back clauses into their player sales without it ever really seeming likely they would be triggered. But the summer of 2025 felt different – at least they hoped so.

Perhaps Doak will follow the same path as Rhian Brewster before him in struggling under the weight of expectation and injuries. He would not even be the first Liverpool forward whose rise stops and irreversible fall starts at Bournemouth; the tale of Jordon Ibe is a warning.

But Liverpool were remarkably eager to let the world know how highly they rate a player whose Cherries debut season was sadly interrupted by a hamstring injury which restricted him to just 216 minutes across ten appearances.

He will hope to break through under new management at Bournemouth – and will be needed in their first campaign juggling European commitments. The Cherries want to see some return on the £20m and £5m in add-ons they handed over for a handful of Liverpool appearances; the Reds were never going to sanction a sale unless it outlined in writing an opportunity to bring him back.

Jarell Quansah The buy-back clause has become a prerequisite to bring Liverpool to the negotiating table for their homegrown products – or at least those plucked from other academies at a young age.

Leverkusen were happy to pay a premium for Quansah to the extent that his 30 Premier League career appearances for the Reds were deemed worth £1m each, with a further £5m potentially due in add-ons.

It meant a worst-case scenario of Liverpool making a healthy amount on a player with 58 senior career appearances at that point, with the best-case scenario handing them control over a substantial centre-half asset if Quansah comes good with some Bundesliga seasoning.

That remains the dream. Despite Ibrahima Konate’s impending exit, Liverpool will resist the temptation to bring Quansah back for £67m this summer, knowing that the price for them will drop to £50m in 12 months’ time when the England international is even more experienced – and arch-nemesis Arne Slot is probably gone.

Which players do Manchester City have a buy-back option on?

Gavin Bazunu “All of them are fantastic players. Southampton bought really good players,” said Pep Guardiola.

Chelsea soon eliminated any temptation Manchester City might have had to take Romeo Lavia straight back but three Etihad academy graduates remained at Southampton after joining in summer 2022.

Bazunu has kept 19 clean sheets and conceded 143 goals in 97 games for Saints, more recently spending time on loan at Standard Liege and Stoke. It does not scream Manchester City.

Juan Larios Nor do consecutive loans in the Spanish second division.

Sam Edozie Or six goals and six assists in 81 appearances since joining in that ill-fated summer 2022 Southampton raid.

Jacob Wright Four substitute appearances amounting to 61 appearances across the Champions League, FA Cup and League Cup prevented Wright from joining the Manchester City transfer cheat code list but it was still a feat to extract £2.3m from Championship side Norwich for the inexperienced midfielder.

Wright impressed enough on loan at Carrow Road to earn a permanent move which the Canaries might end up paying more for in add-ons.

Manchester City will be keeping tabs in case the 20-year-old shines and their buy-back or sell-on clauses come into action.

James McAtee Perhaps burned by Cole Palmer – and certainly finding Nottingham Forest more amenable to such clauses than Chelsea would ever have been – Manchester City put the usual fine print into the £30m sale of James McAtee.

Pep Guardiola’s former side have a sell-on and buy-back clause on a player their old manager said “has the potential to be with Man City,” but who simply “wants more minutes and it’s fair enough”.

Callum Doyle Wrexham spent a fortune to try and make a fourth consecutive promotion a reality under Phil Parkinson, breaking their transfer record twice for Lewis O’Brien (£5m) and then Nathan Broadhead (£10m).

Doyle will sit snugly in between at £7.5m if the add-ons in his deal are activated, by which point Manchester City will either be gleefully contemplating a 20 per cent sell-on clause or buy-back option for a defender who literally never played for them.

Which players do Manchester United have a buy-back option on?

Willy Kambwala There are few areas in which Manchester United have definitely improved their operations over the last few years, but they are absolutely better at engineering more advantageous sales.

Kambwala played ten games for Erik ten Hag through an injury crisis in 2023/24 but remained low down the centre-half pecking order and had rejected a new contract offer so the teenager was sold to Villarreal for a deal worth £9.6m, with a healthy sell-on clause and three-year buy-back option.

Things were going well enough for Kambwala in Spain before a long-term hamstring injury derailed his progress. Manchester United will still be keeping a watchful eye.

Facundo Pellistri It was a similar story with Pellistri, for whom Panathinaikos could end up paying £6.8m to essentially borrow if he comes good in Greece.

Manchester United hold a mammoth 45% sell-on clause but also another buy-back option which lasts for three years. The forward scoring four goals in 53 appearances in his first two seasons for the fading Super League giants is unlikely to see it activated.

Hannibal Mejbri Gary Neville would absolutely like to see Hannibal lecture the Manchester United squad on the importance of kicking Liverpool players but that violent cameo ended up being the highlight of the midfielder’s 13-game Old Trafford career.

It could be revisited down the line as the Red Devils this time negotiated a £9.4m fee and 50% sell-on clause to go with their now standard buy-back option. Manchester United could have a hell of a team one day if all these offloaded talents realise their potential simultaneously, as those who leave immediately tend to.

Mason Greenwood As the Daily Telegraph reported in July 2024:

A huge sell-on clause entitling Manchester United to 50% of any profit Marseille make on £26.7m signing Greenwood is far more relevant. .