We give him a 4 mill signing on fee then a year down the line he kicks up a fuss and say he wants out? It's a no from me
Signing on fees do not work like this. They are spread over the length of the contract and typically paid in quarterly installments. If the club sells the player without the player having requested a transfer then the club have to pay the remaining installments of the signing on fee (or loyalty bonus as it is often laughingly called these days). However if the player requests a transfer and is then granted that transfer and leaves then the club no longer have to pay the remainaing installments. This is the reason why clubs ask players to submit written transfer requests when they want to go.
Something that many people fail to consider is that ANY football deal includes both an element of weekly wage and loyalty bonus. Even players resigning new deals at the same club. For instance Gareth Bale's recent reported £100k a week deal probably consists of something like £80k a week of wages and a £4 million loyalty bonus.
Something to consider with Adebayor is the following. When he signed on a Emirates Marketing Project for his reported £170k a week. That deal would've consisted of a certain amount of wages (let's say £6.5 million a year - i.e. £130k a week) and also a signing on fee - let's call this £10 million (i.e. the equivalent of another £40k a week over the 5 year deal).
Adebayor has 2 years remaining on his Emirates Marketing Project contract. He has not put in a transfer request and therefore Emirates Marketing Project still have to pay him his remaining installments of his original signing on fee. Therefore he will probably be receiving a £4 million pay off from Emirates Marketing Project.
Therefore to break even with his previous wage level at Spurs he would need to earn the remaining £6.5 million a year. So let's assume a 4 year deal. £100k a week wages and a £6 million signing on fee (which as I said before is spread over length of contract). Adebayor is therefore earning the same money at Spurs that he would've earned at City for the next two years (effectively £6.5 million from Spurs and £2 million from City in each of those two years) and then in the remaining 2 years he will
only earn £6.5 million a year all paid by Spurs.
While I am on the subject of Adebayor I get frustrated by the amount of people who criticise his finishing and say "We need a more clinical striker". The facts last season were that Adebayor scored 17 goals and assisted another 11 (he also had 4 perfectly good goals chalked off). Whenever you consider a striker do not consider how many chances they miss, consider how many they score. Better to have a striker who get's 100 chances and scores 20 goals than a striker who get's 15 chances and scores 10 goals. A HUGE part of football is having the ability, strength, positional sense and desire to get into those goalscoring positions. People used to slag off Andy Cole because "He needs 8 chances to score a goal" but those such as Fergusson knew that getting the chance in the first place was half the battle.
We could get Leandro for 24m pay him 50k a week and that would cost us 32m over 3 seasons. But we could sell the Brazilian international striker on for a 30+m.
Alternatively we could buy Leandro, he could fail to adapt to English football and we only recoup £10 million for him with our league position having suffered in the mean time? We know what we are getting with Adebayor and that is a player that is ideally suited to English football and has proven that he can score and create goals for us and not only that but he also works incredibly hard for the team.
I cannot think of a better striker than Adebayor that we could possibly hope to sign. I am delighted that he is signing for us permanently.
