If you think Berahino is the only player where something is kept quiet and out of the press then I would 100% say you are mistaken, sometimes its in the clubs interest to keep it quiet and other times it does the club a favour in getting rid of the player, again there is no comparison to this.
So if you knew about Malagas problems then you would know why Rondon and others left the club, nothing to do with jumping ship, the club could not afford to continue paying the wages they were paying, many players they had signed on big wages had to leave. I have no idea why he left Rubin Kazan but his club received more money than they paid for him yet when he then left Zenit to come here it was for less money as again his club had to sell which was highly publicised when he joined us.
Now instead of asking me if I believe a footballer can be a mercenary and the answer is yes, do I think Rondon is? no I don't, answer the question of why Rondon is a mercenary and what he has actually done wrong as we're still waiting?
You also made a comment about him not saying anything about us in the report you linked but as pointed out he did say a few thinks on Twitter -
Salomón Rondón
✔
@salorondon23
The Baggies fans will forever be in my heart. They made me feel at home from day one & I'll be eternally grateful for how they supported my family and I. Playing at the Hawthorns and giving my all for @WBA has been one of the best experiences of my life. I wish you all the best.
I didn't say Berahino is the only player where the stuff hasn't come, out I said the exact opposite, that there is a lot of stuff that doesn't come out if the club and the player/agent don't want it to come out, and that Rondon training on his own indicates to me that something did happen, whether you read about it on newsnow or not.
Furthermore, you stated that his contract may not have had a flex down clause because that was the only way to get him to sign. This article to suggests it did, and it appears JP didn't change his stance on those, but gave relegation release clauses instead from what happened with Evans and Chadli:
https://www.expressandstar.com/sport/football/west-bromwich-albion/2018/01/25/west-brom-players-face-50-pay-cut-if-relegated/You seem to think we wanted him out and he did us a favour by going, then why not Jrod too and the others who wanted out.
I don't believe it was because we badly wanted Gayle, just that he was available and we needed a replacement for Rondon as he wanted out, and from what was reported at the time we got him and a £2m loan fee in the swap for Rondon, it appeared a great deal, but then Dowling said we paid a loan fee for Gayle recently. So here the press got it wrong again, and we don't know what it really cost us to get Gayle as it was also reported he signed a new £55k a week at newcastle before agreeing to join us.
So depending on if we paid all of Gayle's wages or even a 2 thirds he would have cost us more in wages than Rondon after his £70k was halved.
Rondon had a release clause and no one matched it so his only other option to get his reported £70k was to go out on loan or take £35k with us and try and get us out the sh11 he helped put us in.
He chose the former.
So you think Anelka and Adebayor are mercenaries but Rondon isn't, I wager that is because you read about those in the press, but you haven't heard/read anything about Rondon, but like I said we don't know what goes on at the club, only what they and the club agent/player choose to release. I'd also argue like you state about Rondon's move from kazan to zenit that he went for a bigger fee, so did Anelka and Adebayor, in Anelka's if memory serves me right, when he went from a £500k Arsenal signing to Real Madrid it was a profit of about £25m or thereabouts, and also another massive profit when Adebayor went to Man City.
Like them he stays around for a couple of seasons and continues his nomadic, mercenary lifestyle.
For all we know he is just another Van Hooijdonk behind the scenes with an agent who doesn't use the press to instigate a move.
If it came out he was on strike or anything then we'd have a player with one year left on his contract and other clubs would know he wanted out badly and would offer stupidly low bids to try and get him as we'd be between a rock and a hard place.
Stupid bids which Newcastle have already tried by saying they would only loan us Murphy if we agreed to loan rondon to them next season knowing that he was on a free then.