Charlie Adam: A Rangers’ Enigma

Written by Adam

When Charlie Adam takes the field for Rangers, he is the most talked about player that day. Most of the time it is about his fitness, the inability to keep up with the opposition, his lack of tracking back, the inability to beat any man including the referee for pace, his inconsistent passing and the size of his behind. But Charlie Adam also has the Ibrox faithful discuss some of what can only be described as Charlie Adam’s “special moments”. Including superb goals against Stuttgart and free kicks like the one against Celtic at Parkhead. Charlie Adam has the ability to play football. He has a good left foot, which he can strike a dead ball from; he has a good range of passing yet has no consistency within himself. Adam always looks for the tightest angles, the longest pass and as I write this article, they rarely come off. He has an inability to play the simple pass, which seems to have left him along with the fundamentals of football that was taught during his time in the Murray Park youth ranks. A dark picture of Charlie Adam has been painted so far which portrays Charlie as a clueless player. This is not the case; Charlie Adam has a footballing monster inside of him waiting to be unleashed. Take his first full season at Rangers. He was a lot fitter under the then manager Paul Le Guen. A failed manager at Rangers who according to club captain Barry Ferguson made training sessions more fitness and athlete orientated focusing on ball control and touch rather than the good old fashioned hard tackling, high tempo, physical training sessions of old. This is where Charlie Adam excelled; he started 40 games and scored 14 goals in all competitions a pretty healthy return for a midfield player. At the end of that season he was voted Rangers Young Player of the Year, voted for by the very fans that are on his case today. So with all this potential where did it all go wrong for Charlie Adam? Well, he has been played out of position on the left wing by the current Rangers manager Walter Smith which must have knocked his confidence. But the most important factor is his fitness which has deteriorated beyond belief. Many Rangers fans whom I have spoken to believe that Charlie has always been overweight and physically poor. This is not true. Under Le Guen, he played in a slight advanced midfield role and was full of running linking up with strikers and arriving late in the box. His passing was sharper, his dead balls more accurate. But since then Charlie Adam has seen himself fail to live up to the promise of his first full season. In order to get Charlie Adam back on track, he needs to take his fitness and improve it, be responsible for it himself, or he risks losing out on a chance of being in the Rangers team for years to come. Yes, he maybe into a five-year deal at Rangers but at a big club where fans expect success and at Rangers where we as fans demand pride, passion and belief on top of success then Charlie Adam’s days must surely be numbered if he continues down this path of destruction. The only way is up for Charlie Adam surely? Time will tell.