Yakubu arrives at R&F

After announcing that he had signed last week, Nigerian forward Yakubu Aiyegbeni has now reported for training with Guangzhou R&F at their Sanshui base.

The 29 year old becomes the latest African ex-Premiership striker to sign for a Super League club after Didier Drogba’s well publicised move to Shanghai Shenhua. He scored 17 goals for a relegated Blackburn Rovers side last season and over the course of his ten seasons in England bagged 96 goals in the Premier League.

However, this experience does not come cheap. Yakubu has the fourth highest salary among CSL players (read the full list here) and his reported $7.85 million pay packet dwarfs that of David who is the next highest paid R&F player at $2 million.

Yakubu will replace Brazilian forward Leonardo as the final foreign player allowed in the R&F squad and will offer a more physical attacking threat than that provided by Zhang Yuan at present. His signing should take some of the pressure off South American attacking midfielders David and Rafael Coelho by providing a stronger presence up-front to hold the ball up.

However, both David and Coelho have adapted well to Chinese football and given their defensive frailties R&F could have used the last foreign player spot to bring in a defender.