The Manchester City Project

During the game with Arsenal (12/09/09) Adebayor appeared to stamp on Van Persie’s head after a rash challenge (see video below). Van Persie has tonight released the following statement on the Arsenal website:

"I am sad and disappointed by my former team-mate Emmanuel Adebayor's mindless and malicious stamp on me during today's match.

"We are both professional footballers and I know that the game is physical, I too have made hard and sometimes mis-timed challenges but never with the intention of hurting an opponent. He set out to hurt me today.

"I knew he was aiming for a collision because he changed the angle of his body to allow contact to be made. He moved backwards when his natural momentum would have taken him forward. I find that deeply disrespectful. He has shown a real lack of class today, to me and the fans.

"I do feel lucky that I have not suffered a greater injury. The contact was only centimetres from my eye. I have not received an apology from him, there were no words exchanged afterwards. He had his own agenda today and that is bad for football. It's bad for the game we all love.

"I want to make it clear that this has nothing to do with the result of today's match. We do not hide from that disappointment but I need to speak out about his behaviour."

The statement released on the Arsenal website, and sanctioned by Arsenal football club is unprecedented in itself. Arsenal do not normally speak of their own players actions nor other clubs players. This just goes to show how deep the feelings are between Arsenal (club, players and fans) and Adebayor.

After Van Persie scored his goal he ran across to the City fans shouting “f**k off”, which has clearly been over shadowed. The challenge before the “stamp” was a terrible challenge that could have been worthy of a red card. Van Persie as we all know is no saint, and to claim that Adebayor set out to hurt him before the game is ridiculous. Takes one to know one eh?

The FA have released a statement that they will be looking at the “stamp” incident and will also investigate Adebayor’s celebration in which he ran the full length of the pitch to celebrate in front of the Arsenal fans. The FA are moving quickly on this – unfortunately Adebayor will most certainly get a ban. With the amount of injuries City have at the moment, coupled with Adebayors fine footballing start to the season, this will be a great loss. He may even be banned from the Manchester derby next week.

What is unclear is will Adebayor receive a ban for the “stamp” because only he knows if it was purely deliberate or not, no matter how incriminating the slow motion replay. The likely outcome could be a one match ban. No matter how much Van Persie and Arsenal cry about it on their website.

Unfortunately there’s no way to brush this one under the carpet, the unimaginative DJ’s at talk sport will make sure this doesn’t go away until next Christmas. Sky have got to fill up a 24 hour news channel too.

The real shame is that Adebayor was clearly man of the match. He was fantastic. Tracking back, making telling runs, scoring. When he scored the third goal I was really pleased for him after the stick he had got from Arsenal and their fans which was over the top – even possibly matching Tottenham’s inability to just let players leave the club without a massive life long hate campaign. However, once Adebayor crossed that half way line my heart sunk – I felt I may be witnessing a three match ban, not a celebration.

However this has happened before – Gary Neville in a game against Liverpool in 2006 ran half the length of the pitch to celebrate a Manchester United goal infront of Liverpool supporters – see video below. Was he banned? No. So if Garry Neville can get away with a £5k fine for this then I really can’t see Adebayor getting a ban.