It was inevitable that the headlines this morning would be about Emmanuel Adebayor. However, while many of us thought it’d be because he scored a goal (ex-Arsenal players always score, dontcha know?), I doubt many of us thought Adebayor would sink to the depths he did yesterday.
I think the referees assessor needs to look very closely at Mark Clattenburg’s performance yesterday because he allowed Adebayor to get away with an extremely nasty foul on Cesc in the first ten minutes. He went over the ball and stamped on his ankle. At the very least that was a yellow card. Clatterburg saw it and he seemed to take into account the circumstances and just gave Adebayor a ticking off. It shouldn’t matter that he was fired up, it shouldn’t matter what he had been saying pre-game, dangerous tackles should be punished and the ref let him away with it.
In the second half Adebayor deliberately stamped on Robin van Persie’s face. Watching on the stream yesterday I first thought he’d stood on his hand, but right under the eye of the ref he raked his studs down van Persie’s face. Take a look. Robin released a statement after the game, saying:
He set out to hurt me today. I knew he was aiming for a collision because he changed the angle of his body to allow contact to be made. He moved backwards when his natural momentum would have taken him forward. I find that deeply disrespectful. He has shown a real lack of class today, to me and the fans.
So it’s not unfair to suggest that when Adebayor scored City’s third goal he should not have been on the pitch. That it took him causing a near riot with his provocative celebration to earn a yellow card is a sad indictment of the Clattenburg who redefined awful yesterday. As for Adebayor – I don’t buy his apology. Sure he was emotional but he knew exactly what he was doing. He’d slagged off Arsenal fans before the game and the celebration was designed to wind up the travelling Gooners even more.
It shows him up as the classless, moronic, idiot he really is. There’s no excuse for the tackle on Cesc (we’re lucky he wasn’t badly injured), the celebration, stupid as it was, I can live with because that’s the kind of thing cunts do, but there’s absolutely no justification for the stamp on van Persie. It was dangerous and cowardly and he needs to be punished for it. The FA have confirmed they will be taking a look at it and I hope he’s sanctioned properly and I hope Clattenburg is too.
Now, leaving that massive cunt to one side what can you say about the game? Defensively it was not our shiningest moment, was it? City opened the scoring when a suspiciously offside Micah Richards looped a header towards our back post. It seemed to take Almunia an age to react and when he did the ball dropped over him, hit the post, hit his head and went in. You have to say there’s an element of bad luck about it but the Spaniard hasn’t had a great start to the season. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Almunia’s best season came when he had Jens waiting on the bench, that kind of competition for his place is not there any more and I think that’s a factor.
Until then I thought we’d bossed the game and were playing quite well. The goal knocked the wind out of our sails a bit and we might have gone further behind. The moment that stands out is Stephen Ireland running through and Gael Clichy actually running away from him. I still don’t quite know why Ireland didn’t shoot, I think Clichy’s bizarre movement confused him and the defender eventually came away with the ball. I may be wrong but Given didn’t have a save to make in the first half.
In the second we struggled to get going until the introduction of Tomas Rosicky added something to our attacking play. He played a ball into Robin van Persie who turned Lescott brilliantly and finished with his right foot into the bottom corner to make it 1-1.
Then we self-destructed. Clichy got caught upfield, there was no effort on Diaby’s part to get back, and when Song was beaten in the left back position it was easy for whichever scabby cunt it was to set up Craig Bellamy to make it 2-1. The third came from the left back position as well, some scabby cunt crossing for Adebayor to score and Shaun Wright-Phillips made it 4-1 as we got caught on the counter. Tomas Rosicky made it 4-2 with a nicely taken goal and it’s good to see him back.
In the last 10-15 minutes we might have scored 3 or 4. Clattenburg ignored Barry’s clear handball at 3-1, which would have made things interesting, van Persie hit the post, Adebayor cleared one off the line, another deflected just wide, Given made a goal line save and we certainly had enough chances to level things up. You might well ask why it took us being 4-1 down to play with the kind of urgency we showed in the latter stages of the game. The 4-3-3 formation is so dependent on hard work when you don’t have the ball. I felt we didn’t really do enough when they had possession and when we had it we seemed lethargic and sloppy. Maybe a post-Interlull hangover but then City had plenty of players away too.
The defensive instability will worry the manager but this is the same defence people were lauding as much improved a couple of weeks ago. To me the reason it was improved was because everybody, from front to back, worked really hard. I don’t think you can say that was true yesterday. As well as that I think we were missing a bit of creativity. If Cesc has an off day, as I think he did, then we’re going to struggle if we don’t have Nasri, Rosicky or Arshavin in the team. I’m beginning to think Denilson/Song is an either/or situation, so having Rosicky back is good news. Let’s hope he can stay fit.
Overall not a great day but it’s early in the season yet. Just as the win against Everton didn’t mean we were the best team in the world defeat yesterday does not mean we’re the worst. What is clear though is that we need to work harder, as a team, and cut out the individual errors which always seem so costly.
Looking at the next run of games in the Premier League (Wigan, Fulham, Blackburn, Birmingham, West Ham, Spurs, Wolves, Sunderland before we play Chelsea) there’s certainly the opportunity to put a decent run of results together and get some badly needed momentum going.
Next on the agenda though is Champions League action as we visit Belgium to play Standard Liege. The recovery has to start there.
