Ade-bye-or: mixed emotions?

As the Usmanov propaganda appears to be swallowed whole by the BBC (how can anyone take a report commissioned by the walrus like fatty seriously is beyond me), Emmanuel Adebayor is on the verge of signing for Manchester City, I hear that he is currently being fondled by the Manchester City doctor. I'm just praying that don't decide to scan his head as they may just find the rather vacuous space that I am sure will be his downfall over and over again.

Anyway I've been mulling over Emmanuel Adebayor's Arsenal career and overall I've concluded that his big ego has resulted in massive underachievement. He was never the most gifted of players, his touch frequently let him down, but in his early days it was his fantastic work rate that made him a first choice selection. His first season and a bit saw a lot of effort but not the most clinical of finishing, he only managed around a goal every three games. 2007/8 saw him hit a purple patch as he banged in 24 league goals in 36 games, an impressive tally by anyone's standards, some of these goals were quite magnificent, the goals away to Newcastle and away to Tottenham particularly stand out in the memory.

Then it all went wrong. Emmanuel doesn't appear the brightest and it seems that all the praise went straight to the vacuum in his skull, maybe he had received some bad advice and maybe the hangers on whispered sweet words of encouragement in his ears. The summer of 2008 saw him pimp himself around Europe in a quite disgraceful manner, he seemed to think that one big season made him one of the best around, he forgot that he was not the most gifted of players and that one of the key ingredients to his success had been his work rate. Last season saw him splutter, the effort was sporadic at best, the dismal performance away to Manu in the CL semi sticks in the mind as being characteristic of a player who no longer fought, who no longer cared. We Arsenal fans no longer sung his name with gusto, this summer came with most of us hoping that someone would come in for him and take him far far away from the Emirates.

So what will happen to Emmanuel Adebayor at City? Well, there will be no shortage of egos in that dressing room and no shortage of strikers in the squad. Santa Cruz, Bellamy, Tevez and Adebayor have all been shipped in recently. The competition for places looks more likely to result in toys being thrown out of prams than helping create hungry strikers. In reality Emmanuel Adebayor is a decent striker, he's big, he's strong, he's good in the air, his touch is erratic, his finishing is average, his goalscoring record is good to middling- he averages almost a league goal every other game but remember that many of these were penalties.

If he had it going on upstairs then you could get past his footballing flaws, the problem is that what happens upstairs is very important, if you are to win the top prizes you need a team full of hard working motivated individuals, unfortunately for Emmanuel and City he is not one of these. One's gut reaction to losing a player is often a guide to how good that player actually is, in that context I am delighted that Adebayor is leaving and even more delighted that we are getting a decent wad in exchange for his Togoan greed. I won't deny that there is a sense of a big missed opportunity regarding Adebayor's Arsenal stay, if he wasn't such a twat he could have been a true legend for us, sadly he was and that's that. Hopefully this money can be reinvested more wisely than it has been spent by City.