Chelsea earned the millions Exeter City craved when Leeds United coughed up transfer fee | OneFootball

When Chelsea poached Ethan Ampadu from Exeter City, the Devon club were hoping for the tribunal to set a big fee, but they ended up disappointed.

Exeter City brought through local lad Ethan Ampadu and they knew they had a generational talent on their hands, but his departure for Chelsea would leave them disappointed.

When Ethan Ampadu made his senior debut for Exeter City against Brentford in the EFL Cup in August 2016, becoming their youngest-ever player in doing so, it was immediately clear that the club had a special talent on their hands. Ampadu won the Man of the Match award for his performance, and received rave reviews for his performance.

But such a stunning debut would attract the interest of others, and Ampadu's time in the first team at Exeter would turn out to be curtailed by it.

Bigger clubs almost immediately started to circle, and after having made just eight League appearances in his season in the Exeter first team, Ampadu was on his way to London to sign for Chelsea.

The transfer fee verdict over Ampadu's Chelsea move left Exeter City furious

With Chelsea and Exeter unable to agree on a valuation, the matter was put to a tribunal in April 2018, and the results were not what the Devon club wanted.

The tribunal adjudged that Chelsea should pay a fee of "up to £2.5 million", but the 'up to' in that phrase was doing quite a lot of heavy lifting. In reality, Exeter were entitled to £1.3 million, only just over half the headline amount, with the remainder to be paid depending on appearances in the Chelsea first team or being sold on.

Ethan Ampadu's move has had a huge domino effect

Exeter's response was one of extreme disappointment. In a statement on the club's website, chairman Julian Tagg said, "to say that we are disappointed is an understatement", and that, "we feel this decision sends the wrong message in terms of financial reward for those owners, chairmen, managers and coaches up and down the country who are also working as hard as us to improve their clubs by producing talented home-grown players for both club and country."

It took Exeter five years to finally cash in on developing Ethan Ampadu with Chelsea, Leeds United deal

What happened next seemed to vindicate Exeter's anger over the decision reached. Ethan Ampadu would remain a Chelsea player for the next five years, but over that time he'd only make 12 appearances for the club, of which only one would come in the Premier League, lasting ten minutes, while five would come in the EFL Trophy.

Instead, Ampadu would spend most of those six years on loan, at RB Leipzig, Sheffield United, Venezia and Spezia. With further payment being dependent on him reaching 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 first team appearances for Chelsea, the appearance-based bonuses became an irrelevance.

But the Grecians did eventually get a more reasonable amount in return for the player they'd brought through and nurtured. When Ampadu left Chelsea for Leeds United, Leeds paid a transfer fee of £7 million for him, at which point another clause of the tribunal's 2018 decision kicked in.

Ampadu's 12 first-team appearances for Chelsea netted Exeter a sum of £250,000 on top of the £1.3 million that they were originally paid, meaning Chelsea's profit from the sale to Leeds was around £5.5m.

A sell-on clause guaranteed Exeter 20% of any profit from the sale, meaning that the Grecians received a further amount of just over £1m.

It took them five years to get there, but Exeter did at least finally get that £2.5 million headline figure from 2018.

However, the move will always sting to some extent. A player of Ampadu's class and potential, which has since been realised, should always have been worth much more than what Exeter collected, and while £2.5 million is no insignicant figure for the Grecians by any means, they never saw the true value of the Welsh international star.