Morning all, it’s the start of another week. Dreary too. The weather really is depressing for summertime.
After the chorus of boos that Emmanuel Adebayor was treated to on Saturday Arsene Wenger has urged fans to get behind the Togonator and leave what happened in the summer in the past. He says:
We have to get behind him and support him because he is of tremendous importance for the team and you want your fans to be behind him. What happened in the transfer period did not always reflect his deep desire [to stay] and there was manipulation from agents on both sides.
I’m sure Adebayor heard what happened and I have no doubt it must have been upsetting. But that’s life. Sometimes you make choices and do things and you piss people off. It takes a bit of time to heal the wounds. I have no doubt there were agents sticky fingers all over what happened in the summer but ultimately the player has to take responsibility for it. I read a great quote from Gael Clichy who said of transfer rumours and speculation:
In my opinion if you want to be in a newspaper you will be in a newspaper. If you don’t want to be then you won’t be.
So the bottom line is that Adebayor has made his bed and as uncomfortable as it is he’s got to lie in it. That said the manager is also right. Booing players rarely ends up being terribly positive but perhaps there’s just only so much fans can take. Sp*rs fans gave Berbatov a good booing for wanting to go to United, Villa fans booed Gareth Barry for wanting to go to Liverpool and Arsenal fans expressed their distaste at Adebayor’s apparent desire to leave by booing him.
In an era when players are paid extortionate amounts of money and the gap between the fan and the player widens ever more maybe it’s just time for the player to get a thicker skin. Especially if they rock the boat all summer and expect things to be forgotten about just because they kiss the badge in a meaningless friendly. I do hope Adebayor isn’t booed again but at the same time I hope he’s got the message and that, maybe, he learns something from it. And when you read stuff like this it really is a shame the way he fucked things up.
On a more positive note Samir Nasri rather enjoyed his day on Saturday. With the manager already making comparisons to Robert Pires (no pressure there then, Sammy) he spoke about his debut, saying:
I could not dream of a better start, to score in my first game after four minutes. Now I will have to continue week in and week out, and hopefully I can keep playing like that, it will be brilliant.
Yes, it will be brilliant. You could see the spark of a lethal new left side partnership between him and Clichy and I think if they get a good run of games together they could become even more dangerous. Pires and Cuntley always worked well down the left before and you get the feeling that’s something the manager wants to replicate. Still, it’s early days but that was as positive a start from Nasri as you could have hoped for.
As I said yesterday with a round of meaningless international friendlies this week it’s going to be a strange week on the training ground with so many players away. Not the ideal preparation for Fulham on Saturday but that’s just the way it goes.
Not much else happening. Just to let anybody who has my email address know that it has changed. The old blogger @ arseblog.com email address got ruined yesterday by some bunch of spamming cunts who flooded my inbox. After downloading about 2,000 ‘return to sender – you spamming bastard’ emails I saw there were another 7,000 waiting to be downloaded so I’ve nuked that address.
If you do need to get in touch please note the new address (in spam friendly format) is thearseblog AT arseblog D0T com. Please update your address books.
Right so, enjoy the day, especially if you’re a duck. Apart from the duck of death. Clint won’t like that.
