How much did Jermain Defoe used to earn a week at Sunderland? | OneFootball

With Sunderland sitting in the bottom half of the Premier League in the 2014-15 season, the Black Cats turned to a prolific English goalscorer in order to try and move them up the table.

Having spent one year away in the MLS with Canadian outfit Toronto FC, Defoe returned to his native country having already scored 124 goals in his Premier League career for West Ham, Tottenham Hotspur and Portsmouth.

And whilst his opening half-season on Wearside wasn't so prolific with just four goals scored, Defoe's following two years would make him a real fan favourite at the Stadium of Light.

The Black Cats were always battling relegation when Defoe was around, but it was his best efforts that in the 2015-16 season at least, his 15 league goals were perhaps the catalyst to keep the North East club in the top flight of English football.

But despite Defoe's regular goalscoring, Sunderland eventually did drop into the Championship in 2017, and that was another season where the ex-England international was carrying the team on his back with another 15 Premier League goals.

Relegation ended Defoe's time at the club that year, but there would be a heroic return some four-and-a-half years later after he had spent time north of the border with Rangers.

It was a time that Defoe couldn't find his old spark though, and after just two months as a Sunderland player once again, Defoe gracefully bowed out of the professional game, admitting that his time was up and he would not stand in the way of the rest of the Black Cats squad who were pushing for promotion from League One.

How much did Jermain Defoe used to earn a week at Sunderland?

As a regular scorer of Premier League goals, a striker of Defoe's calibre was always going to command a decent salary, and according to ESTIMATES made by finance website Capology, the sharp-shooter was the Black Cats' top earner on arrival.

They estimate that Defoe was handed a contract of around £80,000 per week at the Stadium of Light, which is somewhat fair game considering his proven track record - he was earning $6,180,000 for his season at Toronto (£5.1 million), which would have given him a weekly wage across the Atlantic Ocean of £98,000 per week.

Defoe's wage estimate at Sunderland would stay the same throughout his first two-and-a-half year stint at the club, in which he would always be the highest-paid player, according to Capology's guesses.

It would mean that Defoe was earning £4.16 million for a full year's work at Sunderland, and considering the amount of goals he scored for them it was hard to argue that he wasn't worth his weight in gold.

Unfortunately, estimates on Capology are not available for his second stint at the club when they were in League One, although they estimate that before he did make the move from Rangers, he was earning $36,404 (£29,832) at Ibrox, so he would have needed to take a significant pay-cut from what he was earning to re-sign for Sunderland in the third tier of English football.