Because we are not a club that could turn down £15million for a player with 12mths left on his contract.
It would have been wholly reckless to force a player to stay who had, by all accounts, expressed his desire to leave, and risk losing him for free the following season.
Yes losing him hurt us short term, but if we're going to avoid going back to the dark ages the club has to run in a financially responsible way too. And in my personal opinion, 24mths on we're in a much better place squad wise, and thats almost solely due to reinvesting Hamer and Vik sales.