Arsenal: Why Emmanuel Adebayor May Never Fulfill His Potential

Emmanuel Adebayor has managed to alienate the Arsenal fans that believed in him from the beginning. By being arrogant enough to assume that after one good season at the club he deserves the status of Thierry Henry and should be paid as such, he has also vindicated the people that put question marks over his attitude to the club, and to football in general.

I remember a conversation I had with a good friend of mine about two years ago, during which I vehemently defended Adebayor’s attitude, which my friend had questioned due to his chequered history. At the time I thought he was a brilliant prospect for the club, slightly rough round the edges, but he definitely had the determination and ability to become a top player. 

My friends distaste for him was based almost entirely on his attitude and he had allowed that to cloud his judgement of the player himself, which I was at pains to point out.

At the time, Adebayor was not the goalscoring leader-of-the-line he is today. He was a brilliant foil for Robin Van Persie and Thierry Henry, tirelessly making runs to pull defences out of position, creating chances with his movement and sweating his proverbials off for the Arsenal cause.

He also showed flashes of skill that in my opinion were out of the ordinary—you could see he had a slightly unique way of controlling the ball, and a different take on how to beat defenders that often caught them off guard. I admired him for these reasons, and most importantly, for his commitment to improvement. You could literally see him getting better.

At his age, if he continued on the right path and honed his finishing skills, I thought Adebayor would become a monster. To be honest he still can, but he has made two fatal errors that I’m not sure he’ll recover from. 

The first, and the most dangerous for his future if he is to be the kind of club-hopping, prima-donna striker that is becoming all too common, is publicly holding to ransom the club and manager who showed such belief in him when the rest of the world was wondering how we’d cope after we lost TH14. That shows a shocking attitude and I’m sure it contributed to AC Milan pulling out of the race to sign him.

Who wants a young player who is yet to peak, in the papers talking about himself as if he was “the one,” claiming everybody wants him so his club need to buck their ideas up and pay him an extortionate amount of money?

The kind of manager that wants an ego like that on his staff is probably only doing it to appease his fans, and it’s no coincidence that the clubs that court him are the ones that instigate tugs-of-war every summer to make sure they have the players who will sell the most shirts come the start of the season.

The second mistake, and the one that former Arsenal players seem to make time and time again, is thinking that he was the biggest contributor to his success, and that he can play like that at any club. He has no chance. Look at former “world’s best left back” Ashley Cole. Compare him to his replacement, Gael Clichy, this season. 

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