Spurs Balls: Useless Adebayor And Weak Pochettino Make One Man Dream Of ‘Man’s Man’ Tim Sherwood
SPURS Balls: The Daily Mail’s Neil Ashton has been talking about Adebayor:
At White Hart Lane on Sunday, Mauricio Pochettino has to make the biggest decision of his short career as head coach of Tottenham: Emmanuel Adebayor cannot play. The striker’s lack of commitment at Villa Park last Sunday, when he was dragged off after 58 minutes, was not just an affront to his team-mates, it was an insult to the sport itself. For Pochettino to make his mark at Spurs, to show the players that he really is the boss, Adebayor cannot be in that team to face Stoke City.
So. Pochettino must show his mettle by dropping the striker. And that means a call-up for Harry Kane. Maybe Pochettino should be like former Spurs manager Tim Sherwood. Ashton called him a “man’s man”.
To make a decision as big as this, to tell a 30-year-old forward who has played for Monaco, Arsenal, Manchester City and Real Madrid, that he no longer justifies his selection will not be easy…Adebayor’s dwindling number of supporters will often stand up for him and tell you ‘he is unplayable on his day’. It has been an awful long time since anyone has been able to say that about the Togolese striker. A couple of years, or more, perhaps.
Ok. We get it. But comapre that to what Neil Ashton write of the same Spurs player less than a couple of years ago.
There was a twinkle in Tim Sherwood’s eye when Tottenham’s interim manager began talking about the enigmatic figure that goes by the name of Emmanuel Adebayor. It was a brief lesson in man-management, the sort of insight that can only be passed on if you have shared a dressing room with some tricky customers down the years. Sherwood has seen it all before after an 18-year playing career and more than 500 appearances for six clubs. You can’t just enrol on a UEFA technical workshop and pick up this kind of stuff….
For that reason Adebayor is putty in Sherwood’s hands, playing as if his life depended on it during Tottenham’s gung-ho victory at St Mary’s. He scored twice, a match-winning contribution that would have been inconceivable under Andre Villas-Boas: they couldn’t stand the sight of each other.
So. Adebayor was “special” under Tim. But rubbish under non-English managers.
Anyone detect a bit of bias in the Mail’s reporting?
Posted: 5th, November 2014 | In: Sports, Spurs Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
