But surely in the context of a player we want rid of, an appearance fee is irrelevant. If he's going to play and get that money, then we wouldn't want rid of him so badly.
Whilst no one knows the detail of his contract, I think it's normal that players' contracts are watertight around them getting their pay for the length of their contract. Unless you can find a club to buy them (and pay him an amount that makes him happy to leave his contract here) or get rid of them on serious disciplinary grounds like we eventually did with Bullard, then you have to pay the player his contract in full. We might get someone to either take him on loan or "buy" him next month for next to nothing, perhaps with us making up any shortfall in his wages as part of the deal. We probably did something similar with Ryan Woods when he was unwanted and left with a year left on his apparently quite lucrative deal.
I suspect we might be able to put together a deal similar to the one we did for George Boyd.