This is the email from Duncan Grant :
Hi Myles,
Three weeks ago you wrote: “Adebayor does not have enough skill to play for Arsenal. He is not good enough and he will never be good enough. He limits the team. He’ll improve but as long as Adebayor is in the team he will limit what Arsenal can achieve. Why sign a big African striker who is no more skilful than a journeyman British striker?”
At the time, I had some sympathy with what you are saying (although I remembered a wonderful layoff to Henry in one of his earliest games as evidence of his, perhaps unorthodox, skills.) I just wonder if recent performances might make you reconsider your view of Adebayor.
Duncan,
Yours is a legitimate question. It’s also a timely question.
I’m reconsidering my view of all players all the time. But Adebayor has not convinced me yet. He scored two goals against Spurs, who are in the bottom three, and three goals against promoted Derby County, who are, as I noted after they lost 4-0 at Spurs, the worst team in Premiership history by some distance. Derby make Watford look like Fenerbahce !
However, Adebayor has become an important warrior during September. His worship of Thierry Henry was unhealthy and he’s benefited from the departure of the diva.
A big, fast, determinded striker lets you mix it up. When Adebayor first got into the Arsenal team, they could hit him with a longer ball. That is vital because football has to be a mixture of long balls and short balls, plus passes that are somewhere between short and long. You need variety and surprise, and the threat of a ball over the top is what gives you room to play.
Route 1, using one pass instead of five, can be effective and exciting. And if teams are suicidal, like Watford last season and Derby last week, and play a high line, Adebayor can get onto balls over the top that put him one-on-one with the goalkeeper. He is a phenomenal competitor who can defend from the front as well as chase balls down the channels. And by holding the ball vigorously in the last third, he pulls his own midfielders up to him and they can set each other up for shots. He is big-hearted, so if he misses a sitter he keeps going and if he misses two sitters he still keeps going.
So Adebayor is now enjoying the opportunity of a lifetime. To play for Arsenal, to train in luxury and travel in luxury, to be pampered and have everything done for you by a highly-organised employer, and get paid £28,000 a week for kicking a ball – he’s in dreamland.
Obviously, he wants to stay in the team. Of course he wants to stay in the team. He’s been at the top for five minutes but he’s never won anything with Arsenal, so he is an unproven centre forward in an unproven team. For this guy, it’s all to play for. Wouldn’t you be enthusiastic?
Myself, I still think Arsenal need a world class striker like Fernando Torres. When Torres is one-on-one, you think he will score. He is mentally calm, sure-footed, physically composed, a killer. He took eight or nine heavy whacks against Reading and came back to score three goals against a decent mid-table Premiership outfit. In a tight game, like a Champions League semi-final, where you only get one chance, I’d back Torres to score.
Compared to Torres or Drogba, Adebayor is erratic. He’s hit-and-miss. But he is a warrior and a good team player, unlike Robin van Persie, who doesn’t track back. Adebayor has improved so much that we now want see how much more he can show us.
A football season is an unfolding story with new chapters being written every week, and I’m always reviewing my opinions on every player and every team. It’s a nine-month journey through a series of games, a series of competitions, a series of judgements, a series of ANR pieces, a series of high points and disappointments. Most people express their views in the office, at work, in the pub, at college, in the kitchen, wherever they happen to be. I publish what I say to friends for over 100,000 unique readers, so I’m putting my balls on the rails every day. Any time I sit down in this chair, I can make a fool of myself. I know that I’m walking a tightrope and can fall off and go splat! at any time. If I was scared of getting it wrong, I couldn’t write one sentence.
My view of a striker can change during a season and sometimes changes over two or three seasons, as with Crespo during his four seasons at Parma, where he started looking like Steve Bull and finished looking like more like Papin.
Generally, I try to remember the basics : if you can’t pass, you can’t play. An average player has one pass, a good player has two passes, and a class player has a range of passes. One great performance is not a great player. One great performance is not a great team. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Football is a game of sequences, especially when you have a French dressing room. October is always a month full of teams who think they’ve arrived. And so on. All the stuff you know by heart if you’ve been here for nine years, as some of you have.
Right now, for me, Adebayor will never be as skilful as Anelka or Torres but he can play a major role in a winning team.
Every team needs tall players as well as medium-sized players because every opposing team has tall players. Adebayor of Togo is a very strong, durable footballer who is playing for a manager who believes that all the best athletes come from the same West African gene pool. Didier Drogba of the Ivory Coast was a playboy in the lower French leagues before he realised his potential at Marseilles and moved to Chelsea and scored 33 goals last season. He did well.
Adebayor joined Arsenal in January 2006 and last season he scored 12 goals and got six assists.He did well.
As I say, Duncan, he has a huge opportunity now. Let’s see what he does with it. I wish him well, I really do. I hope he makes it. The rewards are huge and the buzz is a high that very few footballers will ever experience.
As I’ve already said : it’s all to play for.