Darragh MacAnthony confident Posh will make millions from Benji Arthur transfer and why his club missed out on a Crystal Palace winger

The Bees reportedly paid close to a million pounds for a 17 year-old centre-back who had yet to break into a Posh first-team squad. He had though starred for England Under 18s in a summer tournament.

Arthur deal

Posh chairman Darragh MacAnthony praised the respectful nature of Brentford’s bid and subsequent negotiations in contrast to other clubs in the latter stages of the transfer window.

“His England manager called Benji the best centre-back of his age and that sparked interest from the entire Premier League,” MacAnthony said on his Hard Truth podcast.

"Even my Liverpool, who never come to our games, started watching our under 21s.

"But Brentford were brilliant to deal with when they made their offer.

"They knew what I wanted in terms of a fee and some add ons and they respected us and paid it. They paid no notice to some headlines suggesting we were struggling financially.

"Benji was not going to sign a pro deal with us so we had to sell and I believe we will still make millions from the deal as I believe he will be in the first team within three years.

"We have some solid add ons.”

Arthur will initially play for Brentford B alongside David Beckham’s son Romeo.

MacAnthony also believes his club’s talent-spotting reputation cost them the signing of an unnamed left winger from Crystal Palace on deadline day.

"The plan if Jonson Clarke-Harris left as we expected was to play Ephron Mason-Clark centrally so we wanted a left-winger,” MacAnthony said.

"I contacted Crystal Palace chairman Steve Parish who I get on great with. He is always willing to take a call from a League One chairman and not all Premier League chairmen will do that.

"Anyway we made on offer for a left-winger who was always going out loan. We didn’t want to loan any forward players, we wanted to buy them. We offered Palace some good add ons as well.

"Steve went away to think about and when he came back he wanted more than we had offered.

"He felt if we were interested in his player it was perhaps time to re-evaluate his worth. He knew what we are like with young talent.

"I did ring Steve back and asked him I’d upset him! If I’d have rang a day earlier we might have been able to thrash something out.”

Hard Truth