Thelonious drops the mic and picks up the keyboard to give us his opinions on Emmanuel Adebayor. What does one of the key voices of The Fighting Cock think of the player who can cause chaos with a hat or a swivel of his hips? Read and find out.
If you can’t love Adebayor at his worst…
Last weekend was the 179th North London derby and the build up for me was as tense as ever. Who would start? Who would be dropped? How would we play? Benjamin Stambouli was quoted as saying Giroud is not his friend because he plays for Arsenal. Ben Davies said he knows how much the game means to the fans. Neither, as it turned out, even made the squad.
After a nondescript performance against West Bromwich Albion, would Mauricio Pochettino finally lose patience with new vice-captain Emmanuel Adebayor and give Roberto Soldado his first league start since Cardiff back in March? In the end, though, Pochettino kept faith with Adebayor – and, in my opinion, rightly so.
After a less than stellar performance, Adebayor came in for a lot of criticism, some of which was overly harsh. On a personal level I am less than enamoured with an ex-Arsenal player being in our ranks. However, we can’t rewrite the past; therefore, I will always judge his performances on their merits.
[linequote]The zenith was the farcical penalty against Basel, which knocked us out of the Europa League[/linequote]
His three seasons with us have been very much a mixed bag. The first was a runaway success: with a midfield of Modric, Bale and van der Vaart behind him, he was easily our best striker since Dimitar Berbatov left in 2008. Adebayor has always had the talent, but there was always that missing element to put him on the same pedestal as Samuel Eto’o and Didier Drogba. What these two have (had) in spades is an incredible work-rate and, arguably more importantly, consistency. Adebayor’s 17 goals in 32 league appearances in his first season gave us the impression of greater times ahead, but that was where it started to go awry.
Harry Redknapp was relieved of his duties and replaced by Andre Villas Boas, with whom Adebayor had a tumultuous relationship. This was reflected in a far less impressive goal return over the next 18 months; the familiar cries of “he only plays well when there’s a contract on the the table” were increasing in volume. The zenith was the farcical penalty against Basel, which knocked us out of the Europa League.
The brilliance of Gareth Bale for the first season and subsequently the signing of Roberto Soldado made it easy to forget about Adebayor. However, Villas Boas’ tenure was to come to an end and Tim Sherwood was to immediately bring back Adebayor into the fray. His faith was rewarded with two goals in his first two games. Adebayor was the catalyst for many good Spurs performances for the remainder of the season, often taking games by the scruff of the neck and gaining us much needed points.
[linequote]When he’s good, he’s good; when he’s bad, we may as well be playing with 10 men[/linequote]
Which brings us to the present day. He is now under his fourth manager at Spurs – this would be amazing at any other club than ours. His form thus far this season has pretty much mirrored the team’s. He is still trying to find his way, showing occasional flashes of brilliance. When he’s good, he’s good; when he’s bad, we may as well be playing with 10 men. That said, do we judge him at his worst or at his best?
Roberto Soldado has two goals in 20 Premier League games. Harry Kane is unproven and it would do absolutely nothing for his confidence to be thrown in at the deep end and not deliver – it was bad enough when he scored a freak own goal against Sunderland. As it stands, Adebayor is our best striker and it’s up to Pochettino and the rest of his team mates to try and get the best out of him. When we have got the best out of him, it makes us a much better side.
If you can’t handle him at his worst, then you don’t deserve him at his best.
All views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of The Fighting Cock. We offer a platform for fans to commit their views to text and voice their thoughts. Football is a passionate game and as long as the views stay within the parameters of what is acceptable, we encourage people to write, get involved and share their thoughts on the mighty Tottenham Hotspur.
7 Comments
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01/10/2014 @ 6:19 pm
All players have bad patches of form, what is never acceptable is a lack of effort. His languid style may go against him, but he was hopeless vs our biggest enemy. Missing chances is one thing failing to defend from the front or busting a gut to get in the box is unforgivable. Look at how Chadli sprinted about 60 yards to get in the box. Where was Ade?
As much as I detest some of the things Suarez does on the pitch his workrate is amazing every game. Rooney also is a better player then Ade also much higher work rate. Spurs are short of quality players we can’t afford passengers in the team especially one who should be one of best players.
Ade should put in more effort to win back the fans until he starts scoring again, he is supposed to be one of the vice captains after all.
02/10/2014 @ 9:59 am
Scorpio…I couldn’t agree with you more, you’re spot on!! It’s not the fact that he’s now been useless for months (although that doesn’t help) it’s the fact that he hasn’t even been trying and if he isn’t going to do it against Arsenal, is he going to do it at all? Furthermore where are these moments of brilliance this season? He’s been awful from the get go and his lack of work rate is now beyond a joke! If Soldado isn’t good enough and Kane isn’t ‘experienced’ enough then play Chadli up front! He deserves that right more than Ade, certainly at the moment anyway!!
01/10/2014 @ 6:52 pm
First off I would like to say this website is great and this article in particular was well written and thought out. That being said, I am not a huge fan of Adebayor remaining our first choice striker. He has immense talent and when he is on, he is pure class. However, my issue is the predictable inconsistency (if that makes sense) of his form.
I was really hoping we would try and sell Ade this summer and perhaps replace him with Bony or Remy. That wasn’t realistic and of course was never going to happen so I was fine with keeping Ade in the starting XI until he was no longer scoring or providing other positives We are getting to the point where perhaps it’s time to give Soldado a run of Prem games. He looked to have formed a nice relationship with Lamela over the pre-season both on and off the pitch.
I am not too confident Bobby is the answer but its becoming clear that Ade isn’t either.
01/10/2014 @ 7:46 pm
I miss the Fighting Cock of Season 1 when it comes to this issue.
Adebayor is a player that turns up some of the time, and unfortunately, we are in a position where the luxury to start such a ‘mercurial’ player isn’t.
“If you can’t handle him at his worst, then you don’t deserve him at his best.” I for one am happy to not see him at his best again if it means we don’t have to see him at his worst. Get him sold.
01/10/2014 @ 8:56 pm
we already play a ‘mercurial’ type player in lamella who IMO still gets knocked off the ball to easily & whilst coming up with some good passes also loses the ball stupidly far too many times… but is still a work in progress.
we can’t afford two of them on the pitch at the same time
01/10/2014 @ 8:32 pm
What was interesting was the way he played vs West Brom. In the first 20 minutes he ran the channels, made good runs off the ball and closd down defenders. Then he stopped. Lack of fitness? Disillusioned with his midfield? Change of tactics? But whatever it was…..it looked awful. And it repeated itself over 90 minutes at the Effeminates.
01/10/2014 @ 8:52 pm
Adebuyor our best striker… & there lies the problem.. it seems that every man & his dog knows we needed another striker to join the ranks in the summer, so when proven premiership strikers came up for sale.. (Welbeck & Remy for instance) we were found wanting in the spending department – again.
it seems Baldini has some kind of crap defensive midfielder fetish & crazy allergy to front men & until we go full circle again & go back to the coach/manager choosing players I’m afraid we’re going to end up with season after season of disappointment.
is someone holding a gun to poch’s head, thus making him pick ade in particular when surely anyone can see he’s reverted back to his old disinterested self from AVB days?