Crystal Palace make transfer enquiry for Tottenham's Emmanuel Adebayor

Emmanuel Adebayor is not in Tottenham Hotspur's plans for the future, which is about as obvious a statement as saying "Leo Messi is pretty good at football." The Togo striker, who ended Tottenham's season on compassionate leave from the club after a series of provocative Facebook posts about his family, has been on the fringes of Spurs' side for the majority of the season. Now, according to the Mail, it appears as though he could be on Alan Pardew's radar as a transfer target to Crystal Palace this summer.

Adebayor is not a terrible striker. He's just not not good enough for a club that hopes to challenge for top four next season. However, he's plenty good enough to contribute a solid number of goals for a mid-to-lower table club, so it's no surprise that he's now being linked to clubs like Crystal Palace and Aston Villa.

However, as is always the case when you start talking about Emmanuel Adebayor and transfers, the problem comes not in the transfer fee, but in Ade's weekly wages. Based on what little information I can gather, Crystal Palace's current highest wage earner is Marouane Chamakh at £50k/week – not huge, but still a substantial increase over last season when Palace's top earner was Dwight Gayle at £18k/wk. Adebayor's wages are thought to hover around £120k/week.

So there are a couple of possibilities here. Either Crystal Palace (or another club):

1. Convince Ade to take a huge (HUGE) pay cut in the twilight of his career,
2. Bite the bullet and pay equivalent wages to what he's earning now, or
3. Work out a deal with Daniel Levy such that Spurs will subsidize a sizable percentage of Ade's wages for a period of time.

I don't know about you, gentle readers, but I'm not real high on any of those three happening. Of all of those options, the one that seems the most feasible is option 3, but you'd have to think that Levy would agree to this only as a last resort, and probably as a last minute deadline day deal. However, even if Spurs would pay, say, £40-50k of Ade's salary until his Spurs contract would expire, that's still cheaper than paying the full £120k for a player who likely wouldn't play much, if at all.

So is this a #batcountry rumor? Well, yes and no. No in the sense that's plausible that a number of clubs will probably take a look at Adebayor this summer, but yes in the sense that very few of these clubs will be able to afford his wages unless he caves. Expect to see a few more rumors like this in the days leading up to the transfer window.