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Perhaps you've heard: former Tottenham Hotspur striker and free agent Emmanuel Adebayor recently signed a contract with Crystal Palace, a one year deal that could be extended even further by mutual agreement at the end of the season.
Who cares, right? Adebayor is officially not our problem after we cut him back in September, and it's high time some other fanbase had to deal with him. But Palace signing Ade does have one significant impact, and that's on Tottenham's wage bill.
Spurs may have cut Ade loose from the club, but as we wrote earlier this fall, they're still on the hook for Ade's £100k/week wages until the expiration of his original Tottenham contract. That's a lot of cheddar for a guy who isn't even wearing the colors. We had reported that any club that would sign Ade might have to negotiate with Daniel Levy to assume a portion of whatever wages Tottenham owed him so that he's not getting double-paid. According to the Telegraph, that seems to be what has happened.
The move will come as relief to Daniel Levy, the Tottenham chairman, as Spurs had still been paying Adebayor's wages of £100,000 a week while he had not been playing following his release in September last year. That will now change as Palace will pay around £65,000 a week to the striker, plus a series of performance-based bonuses that could lead to their effectively cover his full salary.
It probably still rankles a bit that Spurs are paying £35k/week for a player who's with another club, but turnabout is fair play. We all chortled about City doing the exact same thing when Ade signed for Spurs, and now the shoe's on the other foot. Even so, £35k/wk. >>> £100k/wk.
The good news is that Ade is saying all the right things about wanting to get back to top form in the Premier League, and since Spurs have already played Palace twice, we don't really have to worry about him taking points off of us until next season. In fact, it very well could be that Motivated Ade™ gives Palace a big boost, takes points off of the clubs ahead of Tottenham in the table, and results in Palace assuming the entirety of Ade's wages. All things considered, that's pretty much the best possible scenario for Spurs.