Gunners Feud

I thought I’d take a brief minute away from my duties over at the Mali blog to take a quick peek at a story involving the god of Togolese football, Emmanuel Adebayor. Or as he’s lovingly referred to in the article I’m talking about, “Manny”.

During a recent drubbing at the hand of Tottenham, Adebayor came on as a sub, scored a goal and apparently blew up at teammate Nicolas Bentdner and possibly even head-butted him. That is all unconfirmed but have a read of the article.

Now despite all the negativity in that article, “Manny” seemed to play it down and was remorseful and apologetic in a few quotes found here.

To summarize, he felt that it was just an overflow of passion the players have for the team. “Overall I think that we should have been more calm during the game and although I was pleased to get a goal back for the team when I came on, I am sorry for the disagreement with my team-mate Nicklas,” said Adebayor. He went on to say, “We are both passionate about this Club and sometimes that can be projected in the wrong way. It was a mistake. We want to focus on the games ahead and rely on our squad’s great togetherness to achieve a fantastic season.” Sounds like Adebayor has a pretty good publicist eh? :)

Even though Bendtner’s father was crying for his boy and wanting some kind of punishment for Adebayor, the FA released this statement: “The FA will not take any formal disciplinary action against over the incident involving Arsenal team-mate Nicklas Bendtner during the Carling Cup semi-final second leg against Tottenham but will write to both players to remind them of their responsibilities.”

I hope for the sake of Arsenal Adebayor’s regret is sincere and they can get beyond the in-fighting, and more importantly, the beat down they received from Tottenham.