When Xherdan Shaqiri left Liverpool for Lyon last summer the deal was always destined to be one of those fairly rare occasions where Liverpool made a loss.
Having paid £13.2m for the Swiss from a relegated Stoke City side in the summer of 2018, there was some question over whether he could deliver on the kind of promise that he showed earlier in his career having faltered during a pretty miserable spell in the Potteries.
But Reds boss Jurgen Klopp knew that Shaqiri could play an important role, albeit not as prominent as he had previously been used to.
He left Anfield clutching a Champions League, Premier League and FIFA Club World Cup winners medals and his time with Liverpool had seen him clock up 63 appearances and eight goals in all competitions.
But at 30 years old and on the fringes of the squad for near enough the entirety of his stay on Merseyside, getting back what they paid was never really on the cards for the Reds.
French side Lyon came in with an offer of £5.4m for his services, with a further £4.5m tacked on to bump up the potential value of the deal to £9.5m, a sum that would have meant only a £3.7m loss on a player who made contributions in some very key moments for Klopp's team.
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But add-ons arrive in a variety of ways, and seeing them actually activated doesn't always happen.
Add-ons usually arrive in the form of payments made when players reach milestones such as qualification for the Champions League with their clubs, winning trophies, appearance or goal-scoring milestones and certain markers met at international level.
These payments are then made to clubs via an 'obligating event' as and when they kick in, and show in the yearly financial accounts as such.
But any hopes of getting some more money for Shaqiri could well have evaporated for Liverpool after the Swiss ended his time in France after a matter of months.
The lure of America and the MLS proved too much to turn down, with Shaqiri joining Chicago Fire in a £5.5m deal.
That deal represents a £100,000 profit for Lyon, but for Liverpool the sum they received last summer will likely be where the money stream ends from the transfer.
Sell-on clauses are commonplace in transfers but usually only kick in at a certain level, agreed at the time of the deal. A transfer fee of £5.5m is unlikely to have seen such a clause, if it existed in this particular deal, kick in.
The MLS operates in a different way than European football and the collegiate draft system is a major part of team recruitment, with strict salary caps in place as is the case across numerous other professional sports in the US.
But Shaqiri arrives in Chicago as a designated player, a player whose wages can be taken on outside of the club's salary cap. MLS clubs are allowed up to three designated players on their roster.
Clubs never bank on add-ons being achieved due to the many variables that exist within the game. But they may have expected to get a little more than the flat fee paid for Shaqiri at the summer and that he would have lasted longer than six months at the Groupama Stadium.
Champions League qualification and appearance and goal fees would likely have formed much of the add-ons, but with Shaqiri having fallen out of favour at Lyon and the season still in full swing, neither is likely to have been reached.
