Morning, hope we find you well and all set for this afternoon’s crunch game against Man City, the lottery winning chavs of football.
Under normal circumstances you’d be talking more about the clubs, the tactics and so on, but of course there’s only one story this morning – Emmanuel Adebayor. To be perfectly frank I’m not inclined to spend too much time on him. We know he has an ego the size of a hippo’s clunge and you can be quite sure he’s absolutely loving all the attention he’s being given at the moment.
Pre-game he’s given interviews to give his view, but here’s the thing about Adebayor. He’s a liar, as we all know, and a piss-poor spin merchant. We went through it last summer. In one interview he was staying, the next, just moments later, he was going. It wasn’t about money, but his agents hawked him around to as many clubs as they could resulting in a whopping pay increase at Arsenal. Then he told us that he had no idea what was going on because his mobile phone had been off all summer.
I think he honestly believes that Arsenal fans are stupid. Why else would you tell such a momumental untruth?
This interview in the Telegraph is full of more of the same. His ludicrous explanation as to why he fell out with Nicklas Bendtner (over some shoes), his pathetic justification for headbutting Bendtner during a match, his boo-hoo-bollocks about how the Arsenal fans treated him and that Wenger told him he was only selling him because we needed the money. As if the manager would tell him something like that.
LIAR. I know there was a lot of divisiveness at the time, when he was still at the club, and when he was on the point of leaving, but as far as I’m concerned Adebayor got the treatment from Arsenal fans that his behaviour merited. He lied to us, he underperformed, perhaps deliberately, he was clearly a disruptive influence in the dressing room, he treated us as if we were morons and if you do that to people then they’re going to react.
He’s not our problem now though and I don’t want to dwell on him too much but this quote sums up Emmanuel Adebayor for me. He’s talking about his new club and the fans there:
What is good at City is that the fans are truly fans. They love you. Arsenal have a lot of fans who are not fans. Arsenal have fans from America and Jamaica. Today they are Arsenal fans, tomorrow they will be Liverpool fans and after tomorrow they will be Manchester United fans.
Honestly, what a thing to say. How insulting to Arsenal fans in general and those from the US and Jamaica. And clearly he’s talking right out of his elongated arse. It’s obvious why too. In all my years of watching football Adebayor is the most insecure, needy player I have ever seen. He wants the City fans to love him. Therefore insult Arsenal fans while calling them great. He claims he’ll score when the fans are behind him, if they’re not then how can he give 100%?
Frankly he’s a pathetic excuse for a man. A decent footballer on his day but not much of a person. Arsene Wenger reckons Adebayor should be respected but he said the same thing about Ashley Cole and that never happened. I hope the Arsenal fans give him a huge amount of stick today (although hopefully not with that elephants song – that is a Sp*rs song) and conversely give Kolo the respectful reception he deserves. Because he does deserve it. Adebayor deserves nothing more than all the vitriol and opprobrium the travelling Gooners can muster.
One thing Wenger is right about though is that he is on fire at the moment (sadly not literally) and we have to put out that fire. He was always a streaky scorer, getting his goals in clumps and then going a little while without scoring, so we need to put an end to this streak today. It’s another big test for William Gallas and Thomas Vermaelen but hopefully the knowledge Gallas has of playing with him will work to our advantage.
In terms of the team I think the only decision the manager has to make is who will play in the position that Andrei Arshavin would have occupied. I know Eduardo is the obvious choice but I think the boss will have watched him play 90 against England midweek and consider leaving him on the bench. So I think we’ll line up as follows:
Almunia – Sagna – Gallas – Vermaelen – Clichy – Song – Denilson – Cesc – Diaby – van Persie – Bendtner.
Subs from many. It’d be nice to see Tomas Rosicky on the bench. If he can play an hour in midweek there’s no reason why he can’t be an option for 15-20 minutes today.
Last season’s game at Middle Eastlands was a disaster. Probably the worst performance of the season. City won 3-0, it might have been 5 or 6, so leaving aside the fact we all want to see Adebayor end up on the losing side, that’s got to be a motivation for the lads today. We’ll have to play well too. City are a much better side than they were back then but perhaps there’s a touch of overconfidence about them when you listen to their players and manager talking in the press. Let’s hope so.
Personally I’m hoping that Bendtner scores the winner, runs the length of the pitch, gives you know who both fingers prompting a series of headbutts which results in an 8 match ban for Needybayor. A man can dream. I know that’s unlikely but I’m still having a little flutter on Nick to score.
Roll on 3pm, I am looking forward to this. COME ON YOU GOOOOONERS.
