fair assessment
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With reports of a medical having taken place and a work permit hearing in Manchester to follow this afternoon, it looks as if Emmanuel Adebayor will be a Man City player by the end of the day.
The fee is reported to be around £25m, which would make Adebayor the most expensive African footballer in history. The figures for his wage fluctuate, but at the upper end of the spectrum, £170,000 p/week would make him the highest paid player in England. They are huge sums - greater than either we or Adebayor could possibly gain from any other club. Milan’s highest offer last summer was reported as £24m - considering how Adebayor’s stock has fallen since then, an improvement on that would be remarkable.
Let me start by saying I think it’s a signing that makes sense for Man City. They have signed a proven Premier League player from a top four club - they will see it as strengthening whilst weakening a rival. I don’t doubt that Adebayor is a better player than Roque Santa Cruz, and he and Carlos Tevez will form a dangerous partnership. Adebayor will score a good few goals, and at times he, Robinho, Tevez and Ireland will click with such attacking verve that some fans will wonder if we made a mistake in letting him go.
Well, we had no choice: Adebayor’s Arsenal career was over. The majority of the damage was done last summer, but when that blew over and he signed a new deal there was a chance for redemption. An early hatrick at Blackburn made that look like a genuine possibility, but as the team’s collective failings dragged the whole squad down, Adebayor sank lower than most. His effort levels dropped and he began to look like a man who wanted to go to Milan and was now medicated only by the soothing morphinous effects of a new £80,000 p/week contract. The nadir was that now infamous interview with Football Focus in which Adebayor seemed to blame the fans for his own poor form. He had given up. City were the only plausible way out this summer, and unless there’s a last minute hitch, Adebayor will grasp it.
I can’t hide that for much of his time with the club, Adebayor has been a favourite of mine. Whilst he has long been a man who divided opinion, there will always be players who capture your imagination for various reasons, and for me Adebayor was one. My initial respect for him was built on his remarkable work-rate. That evolved as the player did; he seems to me to be the most recent and arguably most successful recipient of Arsene Wenger’s transformative alchemy: he took a trouble-making unknown from the substitute’s bench at Monaco and made him into a £25m 30-goal striker. The romance of that process is what created Arsene’s reputation as a star-maker. Le Boss took a man whose career was going nowhere and made him a global footballing star.
Adebayor, sadly, was too stupid to ignore the advisors who doubtless surround him and realise that for himself. At Arsenal he had a wonderful platform to go on and write his name among other great goalscorers: despite question marks over his finishing he is well over half the way to 100 Arsenal goals. Instead, he threw his toys out of the pram until they were returned with bundles of cash, and when they were he lay there and sucked his thumb instead of continuing the hard work that had got him to that point.
It is, in the words of Elton John, a sad sad situation, but fortunately one that it seems will soon be resolved.
