Manchester City signed the midfield player to a four-year contract.
Although Portsmouth made every effort to get Alex Robertson, Cardiff City finally emerged victorious in the competition, according to Portsmouth manager John Mousinho.
Three weeks ago, WalesOnline first revealed that City was interested in the Australia international. The journey to officially announcing his signing yesterday hasn’t been easy.
In fact, according to Erol Bulut, six Championship teams were vying for the 21-year-old, who excelled while on loan at Fratton Park the previous season and helped Pompey advance from League One. The team that was most interested in signing the center midfielder was Portsmouth, and they worked very hard to make the transfer happen.
But Robertson, whose uncle Gavin Rae is a local favorite among fans, ultimately went with the Bluebirds.
Cardiff negotiated a contract with Man City that included a 25% sell-on clause on any future sales, in exchange for an initial payment said to be little less than £1 million and a four-year term.
Following his discovery that Robertson had joined Cardiff, Mousinho stated to The News: “A player joins a club for a variety of reasons; there are a lot of them.”
Regarding where we are as a football team and what we could accomplish, the only thing I would say about Alex is that we did everything we could.
“We pushed it as far as we could, and with the full support of the owners, I’m sitting here now, fully satisfied with all we’ve done on the club side to accomplish it.
Some of the numbers and stats we’re talking about are definitely unfamiliar to me from my time as head coach.
“That’s something which is an obvious and natural thing to happen when you go into the Championship, but I’m really happy with everything we’ve done there and I have no complaints about that.”It’s inevitable that players will select other teams; you have to learn to deal with it.”
Robertson was a teammate of Marlon Pack, a former midfielder for Cardiff who excelled in League One the previous year and helped his childhood team win promotion. Get our Cardiff City newsletter by subscribing here.
Pack, who played more than 100 games for the Bluebirds in three years, expressed his regret that Robertson chose the Welsh capital over a return to Pompey, but he also said some very tasteful things about his former club.
With an Instagram post that read, “Gutted, but wish you nothing but success, mate,” Pack acknowledged Robertson. “Great club with some fantastic people down there.”
