McNulty wrote:
These signings......EF seems like a farm team for the teams with more dough. Sucks that D Martinez can walk from his commitment like that. Vaughters goes out and finds these guys and then they perform and add market value and Ineos et al say here's a bunch more dough and btw, EF, what will it take to buy out his contract? Or maybe they're not even that honorable, they just poach. Maybe EF says, look we've got a deal and we're holding you to it. And said rider says, ok, fine, I'll stay and be unhappy and just suck until the contract is up.
Or maybe the deal was sweetened some other way for EF.
You'd have to think that the deal was sweetened considerably. D Martinez was supposed to be EF's premier rider in development. No way Ineos just walks in and scoops them up prior to the contract being up.
Remember when they paid a pretty penny from Androni for Bernal? One of EF's revenue streams is educational travel. If the company is hurting, you'd have to imagine that the team is hurting.