To those saying 'no we shouldn't sell' and that 'if we're serious about promotion we'd keep him', where have you been for the past 5 years? This is the model, and it's one that's bringing money to the club and ensuring that we're not only avoiding haemorrhaging losses but we're actually in profit too.
It's not like that money disappears either, it gets reinvested either to the playing staff or club infrastructure. If we sell a player then we'll get a replacement, or more likely we'll have already signed them. Atkinson arrived as Dickie's replacement and now McNally is Rob's. When we can't make any money from the stadium we have to use this model.
Karl knew these were the guidelines when he signed up to manage us, and for all my criticisms of his tactical ability and game management, bringing through youth and developing players has been one thing him and the club have been successful at. When we sold Dickie these exact things were floating around, with fans claiming it was the end of days. But guess what? Atkinson stepped up.
Players will move on, it's just the way of third-tier football. And I'd rather we get hundreds-of-thousands if not millions of pounds for them rather than refusing to sell them and letting them go on a free, all for the sake of a gamble on promotion.