Emmanuel Adebayor boot was Arsene Wenger’s best move

Matthew Norman
14 Sep 2009

With hindsight, you needed to be neither the late Doris Stokes nor the even later Sherlock Holmes to predict Emmanuel Adebayor's reaction to scoring against his old club at Eastlands on Saturday.

The clue was right there in a newspaper report of Friday in which the Togolese declared that he would carry his resentment at his maltreatment by Arsenal fans to the grave.

"Their hate for me is the thing that will stay in my heart, not until the end of my career," declared this fierce foe of self-dramatisation, "but until the end of my life."

He might just as well have picked up a voodoo doll painted red and white, with an old gun carriage on its left breast and stabbed it in the head for the reporter's benefit.

How Mark Hughes failed to notice the Don Corleonesque pledge never to relinquish the grudge, and take him aside for a pre-match recitation of the riot act, is something only the Manchester City's manager can explain.

The cost of his failure to do so could be huge. If City miss out on a Champions League slot by a few points, his star striker's impending absence due to suspension may very well explain it.

In the event, the best that can be said for Adebayor's retribution was admirably varied, split between the infantile and the malevolent.

Celebrating his goal during his club's 4-2 win by sprinting the length of the pitch and knee-sliding exultantly towards the ranks of Arsenal supporters wasn't smart or grown up, but the abuse he endured from those fans last season had been intense and unrelenting enough at least to explain why he did it.

No one should better understand the distress caused by vile chanting than Arsene Wenger and one hopes the Alsatian will show some empathy towards his former employee.

A letter to the Football Association asking for clemency over Adebayor's taunting of his tormentors would be a lovely touch, although the holding of breath for that is not advised.

There is no mitigation, it goes without saying, for his earlier misdemeanour.

In his statement on the matter (an address four times longer than the one at Gettysburg) victim Robin van Persie described Adebayor as "lacking class", and you have to revere the Dutchman's mastery of classical English understatement.

This was plain and simply a vicious criminal assault.

The ambition was crystal clear from the direction of Adebayor's glance, the act laced with ill intent, the distance by which it avoided blinding the left eye minuscule.

Were Adebayor charged with ABH, as he ought to be, he could expect a three-month suspended sentence.

A three or four-game ban would seem a risible penalty for wilfully jeopardising a career.

That Arsenal, tied at 1-1 at the time but looking the likely winners, went to pieces after the incident felt like a repeat in microcosm of the total collapse following Eduardo's horrendous leg break at Birmingham City 19 months ago.

The mental frailty that belies the gorgeousness of their play persists and will do so unless and until Wenger spends some of the money he received for Adebayor on a couple of grizzly old pros capable of imposing discipline on the pitch.

As for the psychological flaws that betray Adebayor's individual brilliance - and the meandering dribble that enabled City winger Shaun Wright-Phillips to stake his claim for miss of the year defied belief - was even more apparent.

If a little pay back for the cretinous bullying he suffered from Arsenal fans was a forgiveably babyish display of braggadocio, the attempt to wound a former team-mate was a savage reminder that talent unmatched by temperament is a vastly overvalued sporting currency.

Wenger may have lost this match and Hughes may still have maximum points. But when both managers reflect this morning on this remarkable game of football, it is the man who sold Adebayor, and not the one who bought him, who should be grinning with relief.