He's 'only' actually on £250k a week wages, the rest is image rights and commercial sponsorships which come with him. However it's still a lot of money and while it's not conclusive proof, this possibly explains why we're pruning our wage bill dramatically.
I dropped some hints the other day but here's the story as I understand it. The Messi camp weren't happy about Barca's proposed acquisition of Neymar, which was planned for next summer after the World Cup, and put out feelers. It was discussed with the owners and our major commercial partners and a deal was sanctioned. In addition, we stuck our oar in the Neymar deal, putting the word out that we were seriously interested. We weren't but it helped panic Barca and they had to do the deal a year early and for more than was planned.
They're also obviously aware of what's going on with Messi and they're not happy with us, to put it mildly. If you look back in January, Rosell was sounding off about us "poaching staff and players at all levels of the club". They were also accusing Soriano of monitoring staff emails (which he's perfectly entitled to do). They were even more pissed off when we approached Pellegrini as they were also considering him. That's how they knew we'd met him, not because the meeting was in public, as people on here were blaming the Dos Amigos for. To get revenge, they waited until the eve of the Cup Final to release the stories, in order to cause us maximum problems, which it did. So, again, accusing the City hierarchy of mismanaging the situation was wide of the mark. We knew Mancini was going and Mancini knew he was going; it just all happened a few days earlier than planned because of the leak from Spain.
The plan (from our side) was to try to do the deal this summer, having effectively engineered the Neymar move a year early but then the tax case hit and put the mockers on that. I've no proof but I'd bet a pound to a penny it was Barca who were responsible for that. If so, it would certainly indicate they were worried about losing him but having done that, it was effectively the severing of their relationship and, as people have said, he just hasn't seemed like the same player this season.
I also found it a little odd that having trailed a £20m a year deal with Nike, it was announced recently as only £12m. I did wonder on here if some of that was being withheld pending something else triggering the rest.
The only thing is, with any transfer, it's not done until the ink is dry on the contract but I'm convinced that there's enough in place for it to happen. Next summer, we'll probably clear Milner, Lescott & Barry off the wage bill, plus a couple of others and that's easily enough to pay Messi, plus Tom Glick's hand will get sore from signing commercial deals.
