Crystal Palace bring Adebayor back to Premier League

(Reuters) – Emmanuel Adebayor has joined his fourth Premier League team after signing for Crystal Palace, the club said on Tuesday.

Adebayor, 31, who has been a free agent since being released by Palace’s rivals Tottenham Hotspur in the summer, has signed until the end of the season.

Palace chairman Steve Parish expressed his joy at the deal. “Real pleasure to welcome @e_adebayor to #cpfc,” he wrote on Twitter.

The Togo striker has also played for Arsenal and Manchester City in the Premier League — scoring on his debut for all three — as well as for Real Madrid and Monaco in a 15-year career that has taken in six clubs in three countries.

Crystal Palace manager Alan Pardew acknowledged that the club were interested in Adebayor following their 3-1 defeat to Spurs on Saturday and said he had no doubt he could deal with the player, who has fallen out with previous managers.

The lanky striker first moved to England in January 2006, when he joined Arsenal from French club Monaco for a fee of around seven million pounds ($10.05 million).

He moved to Manchester City for almost three times that figure in July 2009, but was loaned to Real Madrid 18 months later.

When the loan period expired in the summer of 2011 Adebayor joined Tottenham, initially also on loan before the switch was made permanent in August 2012 for a fee of about 4.5 million pounds.

However, with Adebayor out of favour at White Hart Lane, the club agreed to release him from his contract last September but have continued to pay his wages, reported in the English media to be 100,000 pounds a week.

He has been training alone in an attempt to stay fit and Palace made their move after suffering a slump in form and injuries to key players — in particular, Yannick Bolasie, who is still out after suffering a leg injury before Christmas.

Palace announced Adebayor’s signing on their website (www.cpfc.co.uk) and said the player would wear the number 25 shirt.

Adebayor has scored 96 times in 230 league games in England, eight behind Ivory Coast’s Didier Drogba, who is the Premier League’s leading African goalscorer.

(Reporting by Neville Dalton, editing by Pritha Sarkar)