Confusing Mathematics Mars Mails' Andre Villas-Boas Pricing Story

The Daily Mail are running a story today about the amount of money paid out to hire and fire Andre Villas-Boas, claiming a £12M settlement has been paid to the former Chelsea boss and that his total cost, considering wages and his '£10M transfer fee' exceeds £30M. That's a frightening claim, but I'm not sure that the maths adds up.

When Villas-Boas was acquired from Porto, Chelsea paid his full buyout clause of €15M (£13.2M) and signed him to a £4.5M per year (around £85,000 per week) contract. This was reported pretty much everywhere, but since I have a Guardian article open, that's what I'm linking to to support that assertion. These figures contrast with the Mail's £10M buyout clause and reported £125,000 per week wages.

Furthermore, it's not entirely clear why Chelsea would have to pay a 12M settlement to Villas-Boas, as the total contract was worth £13.5M over three years, and he had been paid £3M for eight months of that already, leaving £10.5M left over. I'm no expert on employee compensation and I welcome enlightenment on this point, but I'm baffled as to why Roman Abramovich would agree to pay Villas-Boas more money than he was originally owed in order to allow him to work elsewhere.

So, yeah, this £12M, £32M business doesn't really fly for me. If you're curious, I have the total cost to Chelsea for Villas-Boas' ill-fated tenure ending up at or probably below the £26.7M mark, which is still obviously far too much - but it's bad enough already without extra cash being thrown in there (apparently) at random.