Adebayor wants to stay at Spurs, may take a wage cut

One of the Spurs players that has been suggested would leave Tottenham this off-season for warmer (and richer) climes is Emmanuel Adebayor. Not so, says the Evening Standard – the London paper claims that Adebayor wants to stay in North London, and is willing to take a pay cut to about £80k-90k a week in order to do it.

Rumors have circulated around Ade's wages ever since we signed him permanently from Manchester City in 2012. Reports have claimed that as a condition of his transfer, City would subsidize a chunk of Adebayor's wages until the date his City contract was to expire, and then we were on the hook for the whole of his weekly wages. Nobody's talking really about how much Ade makes, but it's said to be around £170k/week. The Standard implies that Ade would be happy with half that.

Hence the transfer rumors. Monaco has been linked to Adebayor, and they're one of the few clubs that could afford his salary. But if the Standard rumor is correct and Ade wants to stay with Spurs and is willing to take a pay cut to do so, this may seriously impact whether or not our Togolese striker will be wearing lilywhite when the season kicks off again in August.

Let's not take this entirely at face value, though. This is a significant concession for Ade. He gives a sizable chunk of his wages to his own charity and other charitable organizations in Togo and has held up contracts (including his transfer to Spurs) to make sure that money gets to Togo. Cutting his wages in half is a big deal, especially when you think how much of that money would likely go to Togo.

If true, the wage cut rumor could imply that he might not be in the future plans of Mauricio Pochettino, or that Daniel Levy is keen to sell him while he still has some resale value. Or it could just be the English media making stuff up. Who knows? Welcome to silly season.