That was exactly my point. It doesn't matter what people thought at the time outside of the club, the club made an informed decision, based off multiple factors. Hindsight shouldn't be used in the argument to prove any point about who was right or wrong in my opinion.
My issue was slightly to do with people saying he shouldn't have been given a contract full stop. Having an issue with the length, I get, but offering him one at the time made sense to me at least.
It's a gamble for any club in a severly depressed market so I can't see it either to be honest.
At best, a loan with us paying his wages, which if we can't sell then I think that would be perfect for both player and club. With Varane and Maguire here, he wouldn't be able to prove his fitness anyway because he's not going to play much. If he goes to a Newcastle for example and does well there and stays fit then I think we'd happily take him back as a 3rd/4th choice or have a value for him next summer.
I think the length of the contract was precisely the issue. Had he singed e.g. a 2+1/2+2 deal with automatic prolongation based on appearances or something like that we would not be having this conversation now.
At the time he was not quite the subject of jokes he is now but still was playing less than half of our matches and his injury problems were very well-known. If we thought he would be a useful squad player nontheless/wanted to protect his value/etc (all the other arguments in favor of giving him new contract) this would all be perfectly accomplished with a shorter term contract, which I would myself not have a problem with. And it is not like he would have kicked a fuss about getting only a shorter deal. I mean we started offering even Giggs and Scholes only 1 year deals at some point.
I really failed to see any argumentation for such a long deal at the time beyond a romantic "show of support", but we are not a charity. And this was unfortunately not an isolated incident which is even more puzzling given that was done a year after we gave Rojo a new bumper contract - and he played a grand total of 5 premier leagues matches in the season after signing (and we gave Rojo only 3+1 contract, so we have not learned from that, but rather doubled down with Jones 4+1 contract!).
Now we are also having trouble shifting Pereira due to giving him 4-year contract when he was a fringe player after a not great Valencia loan spell, but at least at the time you could make "protect the value" argument as he was young, not injury prone and not on huge wages. With Jones on the other hand it is just mind boggling and was already mind-boggling even at the time.