Crystal Palace’s ability to hike player’s wages on signing becomes clear, unless it’s a ‘leak’

Ibrahim Amadou’s potential late move to Crystal Palace was classic deadline day farce.

The Lille player had got the train to London, eagerly awaiting a move that wasn’t going to happen and there were all kinds of claims around what was going on.

Sky Sports, trying to up the drama on everything, claimed Amadou had been telephoning Lille’s chiefs from London, begging to be allowed to make the move to Crystal Palace, with no joy coming back for him.

In France, Foot Mercato claimed Crystal Palace had offered the player £53k per week to make the move. By Premier League standards that’s not a huge salary, but it’s more than Amadou currently earns.

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Tuesday’s edition of L’Equipe has a feature on salaries paid in Ligue 1 and in the club by club section, it shows Amadou is jointly Lille’s second top earner. He currently brings in €180k per month before tax, which after some currency change and calculations works out to be £37k per week.

However, with suggestions coming out of France that Lille may have fabricated offers their players received, and leaked them to the press to show would-be-investors the value of current assets, perhaps that £53k from Crystal Palace should be taken with a pinch of salt.