Middlesbrough: Major Emmanuel Latte Lath contract revelation emerges - It explains MLS appeal | OneFootball

A huge and fascinating revelation over how much former Boro star Emmanuel Latte Lath is earning at Atlanta United has emerged.

Atlanta United's contract offer that successfully prized striker Emmanuel Latte Lath away from Middlesbrough in the winter transfer window was reportedly worth £70,000-a-week.

That's according to a report from Teesside Live on Thursday, which perhaps helps to explain why the Ivorian international was keen to make the move to the MLS outfit.

Middlesbrough sold the 26-year-old centre-forward to Atlanta United in early February for both a club and MLS record transfer fee, reportedly worth up to £22.5m.

Huge Emmanuel Latte Lath Atlanta United contract update emerges

It was always acknowledged that a move to the MLS would come with a significant wage hike for Latte Lath.

However, the exact amount he would be earning with his new club across the pond was unknown, with talkSPORT reporting that his new weekly wage packet would be in excess of £40,000-a-week.

But, a new report from Teesside Live has now suggested that Atlanta United's contract proposal to Latte Lath was in fact worth £70,000-a-week.

The report also goes on to state that the player's representative had been pushing for a move for some time in the build up to his eventual sale, with Middlesbrough asking Lath to remain with the club until the end of the season and fire them to the Premier League.

It's said that had the Ivorian helped Michael Carrick's side achieve that goal, then Boro had promised to offer him fresh terms. However, Lath's representatives are said to have made demands that Middlesbrough were unable to match.

That then opened the door for Atlanta to blow Boro out of the water with a £70k-a-week contract for their prolific goalscorer, with the club then understood to have felt as though rejecting those approaches and potentially keeping an unhappy player in their ranks was too big of a risk to take, and so it then became about getting the best possible price for him.

If Middlesbrough believed they were at risk of damaging squad harmony by keeping Lath, then mid-season sale was justified

When in the midst of a promotion push, fans never wish to see their starman sold.

Indeed, the winter window sale of Latte Lath was, for many Boro supporters, a watershed moment in their season, with a sizeable contingent of the fanbase taking it as an indication that the club were somewhat waving the white flag on their promotion aspirations this term.

However, if Carrick and the club felt as though keeping Lath beyond the winter transfer window would pose a bigger risk of derailing their play-off push rather than selling him would, then Boro are surely justified in their decision to cash in.

Speaking via Teesside Live, Carrick revealed that he doesn't believe the mid-season sale of Latte Lath was the reason behind Boro's failure to make the top six this season.

"You can look at all sorts of things. In football, you lose players at times - whether that’s because of a transfer, injury or suspension," He said.

"That’s part of it. We’ve lost players over time here and that’s just how it is. You deal with it and you move on. I believe we had a good enough group to manage that.

"I don’t think it’s a one player thing. It’s about us all collectively as a group. In the end, over the course of the whole season, we ended up not getting enough to achieve what we wanted to."