It's bit silly - he's contracted for a certain amount of time and gets paid a set amount for that time. If City want to pay him out of the contract at any point they have to pay the total contract value. So really this "pay cut" is just that the payment for his whole contract gets paid mostly in the first year rather than spread over the whole term. Probably doing it for some accounting breaks that mean that he doesn't count as a guest next season so City can bring in some other fading star
You can only have a guest for 1 year, so by doing this they get 3 marquees for two years as he falls under the cap once his guest stint is over. Just another example of the FFA flouting the alleged intention of the rules.j
If the FFA were actually seriously concerned about teams rotting the salary cap system this way there'd be an easy fix - just divide the total salary amount over the course of the contract by the number of years and use that.
The FFA's constant erosion of the integrity of the salary cap to placate the rich clubs makes a mockery of the whole concept of the cap in the first place. It's a massive danger to the future of the competition to continue to create a rich/poor divide in a league with only 10 teams