Bristol City Monitoring Alex Scott's Premier League Potential
Bristol City are quietly watching the Premier League market – and Alex Scott could yet become their most valuable player of all, without kicking another ball for the club.
Steve Lansdown has confirmed City stand to profit if AFC Bournemouth eventually cash in on the midfielder, who left Ashton Gate only last summer in a deal worth about £25m after being plucked from non-league Guernsey FC in 2019.
Scott’s rise has been sharp. From the Channel Islands to the Championship, and now a Premier League creator attracting serious attention. Chelsea and Arsenal are among the clubs to have monitored the England Under-21 international, with Bournemouth rejecting a £64m bid from Chelsea last month.
Bournemouth insist Scott is not for sale. He is tied to the club until 2028 and has already turned down a new contract, but the Cherries are standing firm on their stance and their valuation.
Lansdown, though, knows how the modern market works – and how vital sell-on clauses have become for ambitious Championship sides.
“We would never let a player depart without having a sell-on clause,” he told BBC Guernsey. He pointed to Antoine Semenyo as the template: the forward left Bristol City for Bournemouth and has since moved on again to Manchester City, triggering another payment.
“So we'll be hopeful that Alex will be sold by Bournemouth at some point in the future because we will then get a share of some of the proceeds,” Lansdown said.
That is the model. Identify, develop, sell – and stay involved in the next big move.
“You take a player on, you invest in their future, their training, their medicals and all the other aspects, and you want them to play for you,” he explained. “And if they can't play for you and you can move them on to somewhere else, you hopefully get a fee, an ongoing fee, if they go to a bigger club again.”
Lansdown would not reveal the exact percentage City negotiated into Scott’s Bournemouth deal. But the numbers being discussed around the 20-year-old show why it matters so much.
Sell-on clauses are typically a slice of the profit the selling club makes. If, for example, City held a 20% sell-on and Bournemouth hit their reported £80m asking price, the Championship side could bank around £11m.
For a club targeting the Championship play-offs, that is not a windfall. It is a potential game-changer.
Money at that level could underpin a summer rebuild, help retain key players or simply stabilise the budget in a division where parachute payments distort the landscape. It would also give Lansdown more room to push towards his long-stated ambition: seeing Bristol City in the Premier League.
The billionaire, who made his fortune co-founding the finance firm Hargreaves Lansdown, became City chairman in 2002 after already taking a majority shareholding. A decade later he took control of Bristol Rugby, having bankrolled them for years, and brought both clubs together under the Bristol Sport umbrella at Ashton Gate.
Now, as the cost of competing at the top end of English football continues to rise, he is openly seeking fresh backing.
“I've made it perfectly clear that I've been looking for investment into Bristol City to go either alongside me or basically take me out of it at some point in the future,” he said. Talks are ongoing, but no deal is close. “We're not at that point yet, but we're looking, we're talking to people and we'll see where it leads us.
“But it's a big business football and if we want to be at the top of the game we need to have that investment.”
That tension runs through every decision at Ashton Gate. The stands demand ambition; the balance sheet demands caution.
“Obviously, your supporter base wants you to spend money and wants you to be successful, that's the outside pressures,” Lansdown said. “The inside pressures are keeping a balanced budget as much as you possibly can.
“You can't really do that without injecting capital in there, so the amount of capital you put in there dictates how well you do.
“So the more people who get to invest into the club, and that's why I'm saying we're looking for new investment, the better chances you have of being successful.”
For now, Bristol City chase the play-offs while keeping one eye on the south coast. If Bournemouth ever decide the time is right to cash in on Alex Scott, the ripple could be felt all the way back at Ashton Gate.
