Here’s the explanation to this for you all:

The buyback clause for Alvaro Fernandez is fixed at £16.7M buy back. However, United have a 50% sell on clause which atomically means that if we’re signing him, we pay half of that which makes it £8.5M. 

This is a transfer method that big teams have been using recently especially Real Madrid. An example is their signing of Fran Garcia whereby they had a buyback clause of €10m but paid €5m due to having a 50% sell on clause as well.

Hats off to the United staff which made this possible but would only look silly if we don’t activate this option either now or in the summer. Worth a shot. If he’s not interested in returning it’s understandable but we NEED to have a look at this.