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Glorious – Gazza In His Own Words. Read the Review, Win the Book!!

/ Alan / Leave a comment

Last summer I heard rumours that Paul Gascoigne was dead. Unlike the rest of the rubbish that circulates the ether, sadly this had the ring of truth. He had been looking more pale and drawn than ever and the stories more bizarre, if that were possible.

Gazza stopped being daft as a brush years ago but the nation kept on laughing. One of the finest footballers of his generation, he’d become a figure of ridicule, easy meat and easy laughs from comedians getting fat on the proceeds of panel shows. In football, mental health problems are taboo. He’d sunk so low that he was denied even his illness. On the contrary, his suffering was exploited by reporters after a story and chairman offering him work.

Mercifully, he’s survived. It’s impossible to know if the empathy from Spurs fans played the tiniest part in keeping him going, but I can’t ever recall such a wave of goodwill towards an ex-Spur. He’s hidden away in Bournemouth, out of rehab but still being supported well, slow progress but steady.

The book is a lavishly illustrated conversation with Paul about his entire career, just turn on the recorder and out streams an engaging, flowing account of his life from the man himself. After a while, close your eyes and you can imagine him in the room, chatting over a cup of tea. This plus the hundreds of colour photos make it a pleasant, welcoming read that tells you about the man’s football career without stretching the reader too far.

The therapy that has played a part of Gascoigne’s rehabilitation enables to him to reflect on what’s gone wrong in an honest, self-aware manner without becoming maudlin or self-indulgent, as is the fate of many other celebrities who have been through the same process.There’s no evaluation, either from an outside voice or from Gascoigne, and nothing about his mental health or his career, if you can call it that, since retirement. This is purely and simply about football. The reader is left to provide the context and whilst many familiar episodes are covered, like the dentist’s chair, escaping the boredom of international tournaments and high jinks at Rangers, there is a refreshing lack of spin or image. This isn’t Gazza – daft as brush, Gazza – the alcoholic or even Gazza – the idiot. It’s just Gazza. He acknowledges in a matter of fact way that he should not have done certain things but what comes over is the total lack of malice in anything that he did. He never had an agenda, a grudge or sought to exact revenge. Most of the time he got into trouble because just the opposite, he never had a plan or thought anything through, but you sense this is why, despite all the things he has got up to, no one in football seems to have a bad word to say about him.

In fact, he comes over as boyish, getting into the same scrapes as a man as he did as a lad. His mind wandering onto other things, football mostly when he should have been studying, losing Kevin’s Keegan’s boot as an apprentice then forgetting his own boots before a crucial game in Euro ‘96. Same response – he can’t tell anyone so it’s a farcical attempt to cover it up, in the case of England playing the entire first half in Sheringham’s spare boots, which were the wrong size.

He confirms what Spurs fans already know, that he played the best football of his career whilst at White Hart Lane. So it’s a little disappointing that the space given over to Spurs is much less than that devoted to England or Rangers. I guess the publishers understand the market. Also, many anecdotes will have a familiar ring for anyone who has read Hunter Davies’ excellent book on Gazza.

The section on Spurs focuses on his remarkable contribution to the 1991 cup run. At the time it seemed to me that he single-handedly inspired the team to Wembley. In reality, the famous victories in the semi-final against Arsenal and the final were founded upon excellent teamwork, and Gascoigne praises the unsung Paul Stewart in particular for “covering the space for me” as Gazza was knackered, either because he was playing in pain through injury or because he prepares for a vital cup-tie by playing 15 sets of squash with John Moncur the night before as he can’t sleep. But the inspiration and glory are rightfully his. A hat-trick against Oxford, a scintillating winner away to Portsmouth, another versus Notts County, all tricky ties, plus the free-kick that will ensure his legendary status for as long as anyone talks about Tottenham Hotspur. Typically he doesn’t dwell on it – cue anecdotes involving nurses, hospitals and testicles – but the effort he made to play through injuries and then to sweat blood to get fit after surgery is nothing short of heroic. He did that for the good of playing football. He did that for us.

In any walk of life, the very greatest tread a fine line between the bold and the reckless. To be original and different, the individual has to think and do something that is fresh and new. What is to our heroes an act of bravery, to us mere mortals seems like the height of foolishness. Gascoigne treads that fine line throughout his career and this book helps you walk with him. The character traits that made him infuriating and a magnet for trouble are the very same that enabled him also to attempt the most outrageous feats on the pitch, and because he was so, so wonderful, he succeeded where most would fail.

Gazza’s an entertaining companion and this is a engaging read in time for the Christmas market. It’s not a confessional, but if there is a message from a fallen hero to the young players of today, it’s not about the dangers of the booze, the sycophants or the lack of support of family and friends, it’s that players should love and cherish the game. If that’s Gazza’s legacy, then this book is a success, for it is above all else about a man who just wants to play football. Rather than the grey, bewildered figure of fun blinking uncomprehending in the spotlight, running on empty, please remember him as he should be remembered, the breath-taking talent of the one of greatest Tottenham players there has ever been.

A couple of my other pieces on Gazza here, about his career, and here, about mental health, Chris Evans and Danny Baker

Glorious – My World, Football and Me by Paul Gascoigne   Published by  Simon and Schuster

WIN A COPY

My copy actually, read once, one careful owner, and the biryani stains will come out with a bit of soap and water.

To win answer this question:

To persuade Gazza to sign for Spurs and not Fergie, Irving Scholar sealed the deal with a few extra items that don’t normally feature in transfer negotiations. Name any of them.

If you need a nudge in the right direction, one item Gazza would be delighted to receive these days and would put to good use in his leisure time (and before you start, he’s off the booze)

E-mail your answer to: alan@tottenhamonmymind.com

Closing date: Tuesday 1st November, 8pm, all correct entries into a hat, first one out wins

And while you’re here, 1 family, 3 generations of Spurs fans are taking part on Saturday in a Family Hike in aid of the British Association for Adoption and Fostering.

You can sponsor us here: Just Giving – Family Hike for BAAF

Just a quid would be great.

Martin Cloake On Danny Blanchflower, Spurs’ Geezers and the Current State of Play

/ Alan / 1 Comment

Dead easy, this interviewing malarkey. Turn on the recorder, sit back, arrange the gems in some semblance of order and there you have it. At least you do when you speak to someone with the infectious enthusiasm of Martin Cloake. A leading authority on Spurs in print, many books written alongside co-author Adam Powley, his ardent passion for the club as journalist and fan remains undiminished.

His latest venture is an E-book called ‘Danny Blanchflower’, the first in a series of SportsSpurs Blanchflower Shots, extended essays that permit the analytical depth of a book but are accessible and readable for those of us without the time or cash to invest in the longer form on a regular basis. It’s new, it’s exciting and Martin is an evangelist for the medium

“What we have is a set of ideas about the growth of e-readers. This series of Spurs E-books which we hope will be part of something bigger, is tapping into people. Longer than an article, shorter than a book.”

Powley and Cloake have spotted a gap in the market. Given the amount about the club on Amazon, Kindle has been slow to catch up. “If you look at the Kindle store, put Tottenham Hotspur in, there’s not a lot of stuff there. It’s a market that people are using. We may be arrogant enough to think we are good enough but we have written books that people buy. We’ve had very good feedback, so we thought let’s put it out there and see how it goes.”

“Blanchflower is the first one, one on Hoddle which has just been completed. We’ll see how they sell and at the moment we’re looking at individual player profiles but depending on how this goes we may expand into other areas. What we don’t want to do is do something that we could do with a publisher. Horses for courses.”

Martin is at pains to stress that he is neither neglecting nor in competition with existing publishing methods. During our discussion he repeatedly emphasises his admiration for Dave Bowler’s book about Blanchflower and for those of us who see the name Cloake or Powley as the kitemark of quality when it comes to Spurs’ writing, the news that they have an excellent relationship with their publishers Vision and Mainstream means there’s probably more of the good stuff to come.

The e-book is something different. “What we can do with the e-books is to get something into the public domain relatively quickly. We are doing a lot of the marketing ourselves anyway. We have the technical expertise to put this up. It’s a much more complicated process than you would imagine”

He’s researched this carefully, noting that whilst there’s some evidence that on desktops people read long-form journalism, on mobile devices they won’t sit and read the 50,000 words in a book. My mind wanders to a blogger’s comment on twitter recently about how he rejected an idea for a post because it would have absorbed 1500 words, whereas readers stop after 300.  Which if true means two thirds of anything I’ve written has been a waste of time, including this piece, but Martin’s energy pulls me back from the brink.

“To justify charging, it can’t be a blog post so we’ve gone for about 10 -12,000 words, shorter than a book, longer than an article. We’re still having a debate,” he muses. “Maybe we shouldn’t be obsessed by the length at all. It’s as long as it should be.”

It certainly works for me in terms of price, length and quality of content. It covers both Blanchflower’s career and the character of the man himself, as well as making pertinent links with contemporary football plus an evaluation of his lasting contribution to the game. £2 on my iphone, read on the train, thanks very much. Perfect. This is precisely the author’s intention.

“We will make sure there is plenty of information and some original comment as well. We’re conscious that a lot of content on the web is recycled, it’s easy to stitch stuff together and put it out there. That’s not the way we want to work. Without sounding high-falluting, we seem to have built up a reputation as people who do things that are high quality. It’s hard to build up a reputation and the quality of the content is what we hope is the thing that sells the books. Quick and quality reads that people can hang on to.”

For the first book in the series, Blanchflower was the natural choice because of his  influence not only on Spurs but also on Martin as a fan. “I’ve always had a bit of an obsession with Danny Blanchflower. I never saw him play – my first game was 1978, 1-0 against Bolton, Don McAllister diving header” We pause momentarily to consider the frankly frightening prospect that this journeyman defender could have been a formative influence on the young impressionable schoolboy, even at this, his finest moment in a white shirt. Less diving, more toppling earthwards, but who am I to say because we are both sufficiently obsessive to remember it.

Moving on swiftly. “I was aware of Spurs since the early 70s when I lived in Haringey. When I started looking at the history of the club, the Double and Blanchflower comes up fairly quickly. He’s a fascinating figure for me. Working as journalist, it became not just the player but the man himself. His journalism was very good. He was very much of a different generation. If we ever got the chance to sit down together we may not have seen eye to eye but I think he is a fascinating character for football as well as Spurs. You’d be hard pushed  to find a more significant figure. Just look at what he was about, what he did and represented.”

“I genuinely do believe that the team was part of something which completely changed the way British football operated. It finished the process started by Arthur Rowe’s push and run team in the early 50s. It changed English football for the better, taking it out of its insularity. Blanchflower was a real thinker and was attracted to us because the club was about changing the way English football was played. He’s a man ahead of his time.”

This boyish passion plus the ability to situate Blanchflower in a broader context makes the e-book compulsive reading. Forget the idea that this is a mere potted biography. It says more about its subject and the English game than a hundred best-selling autobiographies of modern players.

“Football can be self-important and we all slip into it, but Blanchflower wasn’t trying to be important, just a professional getting on with this job who thought about things.” Martin warms to his theme of the bigger picture. “I have 2 young boys. There’s a danger that being clever is seen as wrong, at school we took the pee out of swots. but Danny showed that ordinary people can be very intelligent, that it’s right to search out knowledge to improve things, to be good at something and think about how it was done. There’s a danger that people see intelligence as being elitist, a bit posh, so wrong and dangerous.”

Influential figure that he was, Blanchflower was met with considerable suspicion by chairmen and officialdom in general, threatened by his combination of prestige and intellect. He was overlooked for jobs in the game, including perhaps at Tottenham. Any antipathy was not helped by his public platform in journalism: Martin rates him highly in that respect too.

Blanchflower wasn’t averse to using the press for his own ends. There’s nothing new under the sun and Spurs are juggling with these issues at the moment, except it’s the manager rather than a player who is arguably using the media to influence club policy. Martin felt it was less sophisticated in Blanchflower’s day.

“He would never admit he was using the press but used a nudge and a wink as leverage to get what he wanted. He wasn’t afraid of speaking his mind.”

Inevitably when two Spurs fans get together, the discussion turns to Redknapp. Martin’s sense of dynamics of the club’s history once more enables some context for Harry’s proclamations, which I for one have criticised over the last few months, August in particular.

“The press loved Venables – he always had a quote. He defined his position regarding the chairman, and you can’t blame him for that.” Redknapp is doing the same, in other words. Martin goes on, “Redknapp is unfairly criticised sometimes. His relationship with the media protects us sometimes.”

Compare the reaction to a few bad results this season at, say, the Emirates or Everton with the silence that greeted our run of one win in 13-odd games last season. However, as Martin shrewdly concludes, “As the great philosopher Ronan Keating once said, ‘you say it best when you say nothing at all’. It would be fascinating to sit down in a few years time with the present regime, it would be a great interview but I can’t see it happening”.

So how would it turn out if you did a ‘Boys From White Hart Lane’ with the current team? Martin can’t resist the idea but envisages problems that encapsulate the different status of the modern players and their relationship with outsiders.

“ You just wouldn’t be able to do it. You wouldn’t get access to players. They [the BFWHL squad] didn’t earn a lot. We tried to make sure everybody was looked after. These guys don’t need the money and they don’t need to talk to anybody. With the best will in the world they are on a different level. I’d love to sit down with Gareth Bale, watch that guy, you can’t take your eyes off him during a game. He seems fully grounded. Top of my list for BFWHL 2011! Benny is a hugely underrated full back and a fascinating character who understands where he comes from, that football is part of something much bigger. The squad seems to be full of likeable individuals. Luka has blotted his copybook but there are no whinging, unpleasant, offensive characters as in other teams. Van der Vaart seems like a good guy. Gomes, I’d like to sit down with him. No shortage of candidates and if they read your blog and they want to write it, give them my name and address, I would love to do it! I’d really love to get the real story, the inside story.”

Much as I like the idea of Bale or Gomes coming across TOMM and being inspired to unburden themselves, it’s unlikely, but if it does, Martin, you’ll be the first to know. Co-authors, OK?

What’s next? As you would by now expect, there’s no shortage of ideas. “Spurs have a rich history of players and personalities. Read these [i.e the ebooks] and find out a bit about the person, what they were like as a player and what they meant, but also look at the wider influences. I’d like to create a space for a debate, possibly a website for the books, forums maybe. Interactivity – the days when journalists or experts handing down wisdom from on high have gone. It’s about having that conversation with the audience who often know more about particular areas than you do. There’s also the opportunity to stretch the remit to include other teams and their players, other sports too, and perhaps other writers.”

Next up, Glenn Hoddle. “Ask any Spurs fan who was the greatest ever, he’s there but he had a lot more criticism than people care to remember. Spurs fans and football in general used to moan about him because he didn’t tackle back.” Like I say, nothing changes. One of my earliest memories at Spurs was hearing fans pile into Martin Chivers.

“He’s accused of being aloof, but just ask the other players about him. They are a bunch of geezers but they are amazed that there could ever be any animosity. Why would there be? They say he was brilliant and we were there to make sure that he could do the things he did. Good guy, we got on with him.”

I look forward to it.

 

Danny Blanchflower by Martin Cloake, edited by Adam Crowley, is available on Kindle from Amazon, £2.99

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Danny-Blanchflower-Sports-Shots-ebook/dp/B005G6TFEK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317823559&sr=8-1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Seismic Rending of Victory in the North London Derby

/ Alan / 9 Comments

Released from the stifling burden of his defensive responsibilities, Kyle Walker moves purposefully onto a loose ball. He’s spent a good while with his back to the wall, unable to shake free of the relentless pressure coming his way as our north London rivals dominate. Walker’s known primarily for his pace but he’s a fine footballer too, so it’s a touch then head down, eyes on the ball, it flies low and on target.

Walker has phenomenal potential but still has a lot to learn – his pace can’t solve every defensive conundrum. The thing is, this young man is tough beyond his years, battle hardened as a teenager in the Championship and now he has his opportunity, he’s absolutely determined to seize it. His eyes are cold and focussed. Ready. As the ball hits the net, the deafening sound of a seismic shift, a  cracking, groaning roar as plates collide to reshape our world in a terrible rending. Rising from the dust, a fresh landscape, new typography to bury the old amongst layers of dinosaur eras. North London is ours.

When I first began to understand fully the significance and drama of the derby, the records of the two clubs over the years showed almost precise symmetry. In the thirty or so years since then, one team has forged ahead. It’s bad enough but on top of that they not only pinched our precious prize of being the only team to win the double, they did it on our ground, then repeated that feat, as well as playing some of the best football the Premier League has ever seen.

Their dominance was symbolised not by these frightening statistics but in the derbies. We just could not get near them. Every time, something happened. Controversial decisions, red cards, we score four but they get five, how can that happen? But most of the time, the fact is they swept us aside, at the Lane with dazzling counter-attacking football and a defensive line that left us like toddlers banging our fists on the floor in blind frustration. I still feel the pain.

Now the balance has finally shifted. Three wins and a draw in the last four tells part of the tale. The key is, we have rebuilt our team gradually whereas they have failed to do the same. Now it’s they who are struggling to keep up. Our blend of youth and experience represents the way forward. And then there’s the intangible but real sensation that in a tight game like this one, it’s going to swing our way. We absorbed considerable pressure in the second half especially and had a few scrapes but did not concede another. In the past, we’ve had to play at our absolute best even to be in with a shout. Yesterday we won despite quiet performances from Modric and Adebayor. Then there’s that swerving, challenging shot that no one, and let’s be honest that includes the fans as well as the keeper, thought was going in until it crossed the line and there was no turning back.

Unlike the crash bang wallop of other city derbies, this was another in the growing tradition of excellent matches, shaped by a fascinating tactical battle between one manager who lives and breathes tactics and another who likes to deny their importance. As with many aspects of Redknapp’s public persona, things aren’t what they seem and ultimately the changes he introduced in the second half proved decisive.

Harry’s instinct to attack plus our opponent’s weakness in defence encouraged a 4-4-2. Wenger countered with five in midfield, tried and trusted by him as well as covering up for his side’s imperfections. After a bright start when we had good chances, their three in centre midfield first stifled our advances then after a period of stalemate, pushed us onto the back foot. Defoe was forced deeper and deeper. To his credit he worked hard all afternoon to good effect but it wasn’t where he wanted to be.

Despite this, we had gone one up, wonderful control from Van der Vaart – no irony, there, not handball – followed by a shot across the keeper. Although the marking could have been better, Rafa made that chance by his movement, popping up unexpectedly on the left. He has the freedom to do so because of the movement behind him, Parker running the show and shifting across to cover if he or others go forward. Adebayor didn’t shine, and missed a cracking chance in the second half, but on the theme of movement, he takes defenders with him to make space for others. A special mention for Defoe in the build-up to the goal. Instead of knocking the ball off, back to goal he turned and took the initiative. That was the crucial moment. Suddenly it created danger and committed their defenders. Three passes later, the ball was in the back of the net.

Second half, the three dominated and enabled them to exploit our vulnerable left. Parker and Modric couldn’t get the ball, never mind get us going, and we fell apart for the equaliser. Too much room for the cross, acres of space at the near post to score.

Redknapp turned the tide by bringing on Sandro, a brave decision to take off your goalscorer and and dangerman, but the correct one. Chances came and went but with this new Spurs there’s another one coming along. Luka should have done better with his but he was uncharacteristically off his admittedly stellar standards. However, he and Bale had done enough to unbalanced the defence that throughout we had been able to move around. Sucked left, there was space on the right as the ball ran loose to Walker.

When the going gets tough, Scott Parker gets going. He took over and despite a couple of knocks, he was not prepared to let this hard-won lead slip. It was as if he’s been playing in the derbies for ten years rather than making his debut. He knew what it meant. Outstanding. With Sandro straight into the action and Bale raiding down the left, we could have scored again but at least it meant for most of the time we had the ball and kept it far, far away from our goal. Kaboul and King protected it well, with Van Persie anonymous. Kaboul was beaten too easily twice in the first half by RVP, once conceding a free kick. However, he didn’t repeat those errors and was commanding in the last 20 minutes, when he needed to be. King’s return is a masterstroke by Harry. He doesn’t seem stretched in the slightest. Odd though to see our rivals cross the ball so often, rather than pass it around, a sure sign that their powers are on the wane. K and K headed it all away.

We won, yet by the end I was exhausted. Relief at the final whistle, but as I calmed down, I realised that despite my anxiety, we were totally on top after we scored. Now there’s only joy, which will last a long while. This is going to be a good week.

It’s frankly unlikely that in other circumstances I’d be able to have a chat with Salman Rushdie. However, a combination of Twitter and the comradeship of being a fan brought us together last evening. A few messages exchanged, he’s been a Spurs fan for 50 years and watched the match in Los Angeles, where he reports the sun grew even brighter on the final whistle. Let’s enjoy the sun and enjoy the win together.

 

 

 

 

Manu – We Need Him But Does He Need Us?

/ Alan / 19 Comments

Tottenham Hotspur desperately need a player like Emmanuel Adebayor. His strength, pace and goalscoring ability on the ground and in the air will if all goes smoothly become the long sought after focal point for our attacking play. No one who was at the Lane to witness his exquisite volley in the 3-1 defeat by our neighbours will need to be convinced – it’s seared in my brain, probably forever, which can’t be said for many of the goals we’ve scored since then.

So the real question is not do we need Emmanuel Adebayor but why does he need us? Specifically, and let’s not beat around the bush here, why does he want to play in front of fans who have given him dogs abuse, more calculated and vile than any I can recall in over 40 years of watching Spurs?

That Song is nasty, brutish and racist. Many say that’s not a legitimate interpretation. I wrote about this last year and nothing I’ve heard before or since has altered my opinion. I am neither a prude nor averse to the abuse that crowds dish out during matches. In fact, there’s a powerful argument  to say that abuse is all fans have left in the face of intransigent and distant administrators, a game driven by profit and power and players who value money and celebrity above pride in their performance.

Despite this, there are limits and this song goes too far. In so doing, it shames the tradition of tolerance in the stands at Spurs. We are rightly indignant when subjected to the equally despicable insults relating to the yids tag, especially as no one does anything about it, indeed in some quarters we are blamed for bringing it on ourselves. However, in the dark days of football racism in the seventies and eighties, when WHam and Chelsea fans racially abused their own black players, when bananas were routinely chucked onto the pitch and not as an energy aid, you never, ever saw that at Tottenham. Yet this song is sung out of habit these days, when until recently the player had nothing to do with us, didn’t even play in the same league. I’m not particularly aware of him having a real go at us, although I am happy to be corrected. Not in the way Terry and Lampard, Henry and Pires have gone out of their way to taunt us.

The song is sung just for the delight of it. He first heard when his father had been dead for less than a year. And we are not the only ones. L’arse sung it when he scored against them for City after his infamous length of the field run to their end.

So in the face of this extraordinary abuse, which he heard for himself at the Bernabeu only a few months back, knowing the fans detest him, he signs. If he strung us along until deadline day only to spurn us at the last second, I wouldn’t have blamed him.

The easy answer is ‘money’. No doubt there’s plenty on offer, not just in terms of matching his salary but also a hefty bonus for signing on the dotted line. However, that’s not the sole reason because he could have achieved that aim by staying where he was or by accepting the other offers that were around.

Professional pride is a factor. He wants to play regularly and knows he will be first choice at Spurs. Harry made him welcome and despite any misgivings about his image expressed on this blog and elsewhere, his reputation with most players is justifiably high. Our style suits Manu perfectly, and if it all goes according to plan, he will be a star again.

Yet professional pride can’t be the full answer because there’s plenty of evidence portraying the striker as disruptive and selfish. At our neighbours he became bored and agitated for a move, cited in the process as an unwelcome influence in the dressing room, while at City he had a right sulk on after being left out, including a fight with one of his team-mates. When the mood takes him, he’s not professional in the slightest.

For us mere mortals, it’s nigh on impossible to fully understand the psyche of a professional footballer. They’re like you and me, flesh and blood after all, yet so different at the same time. In your world, whatever your job, if you had been viciously and publicly abused over a sustained period by your main rival company, would you go and work for them for the same money and if you had an alternative job offer? At your sales conventions, in the pub, in your trade press, you were the butt of all the jokes, now you’re on the payroll. I wouldn’t, and I’m the most reasonable man I’ve ever known.

Some players deal with this by being mercenaries, flitting from club to club with little or no loyalty to anything other than themselves and their paycheque, but that doesn’t ring true in this case. There’s something more to Adebayor. Many professionals react to the pressure by retreating into their own world as a form of self-protection. They assiduously guard this sense of self-worth, to the point of absurdity at times where their self-importance becomes arrogance. However, without their self-confidence, they are lost, unable to cut it in the face of the demand to succeed in the public eye, endless analysis of their faults compounded with stark abuse from fans. In Adebayor’s case, this resilience is not just about football, it’s survival.

The messageboards and twitter greeted Adebayor’s signing with a flood of suitably positive new versions of That Song, and very amusing and self-depreciating they were too. In a small way I like to think I set the ball rolling. Granted my effort in that article last year is unlikely to be adopted by the Park Lane –  “Your father undertook a series of menial jobs despite the probable stigma and damage to his self-esteem in order to care for his family and give his son the best possible opportunity to further his footballing career.” It doesn’t even scan but has the advantage of historical accuracy.

Manu was born and raised in Lome, a town near Togo’s border with Ghana, where in order to eke out a living for her son and his 5 siblings, his mother sold dried fish. One account states that his family were so poor, they could not afford to pay for medical treatment so he was left in the hospital for a week or so. At 11 he was staying in a football academy close by a border where drug and arms trafficking was rife, moving on to France in 1999. This in an era where England’s internationals complain about the pressure of being in a 5 star training camp for a few weeks.

Despite his wealth, Adebayor hasn’t forgotten his roots. He’s built a house for his mother and family as following his father’s death in 2007 he’s taken responsibility for the household, and he regularly returns to his country to put something back into the society from which he escaped because he could play football.

Perhaps it’s not merely a common language and heritage that cements the friendship between Benny Assou Ekotto and Abebayor. Both have known hardship in their early lives, both present a detached attitude to the game that does not detract from the quality of their performance. They are self-contained, secure and confident in their sense of self. It gets them through.

This inner strength was tested to its limits and beyond when along with his Togo team-mates, Adebayor clung for cover in the twisted wreckage of a bullet-ridden coach as it was attacked before a tournament. His friend, the team’s press officer, died in his arms. He’s lived a life most of us could not imagine and he’s only 27. Perhaps the songs don’t have the same impact.

So there’s plenty to admire in Emmanuel Adebayor but the reasons behind his success mean that we’ll never become that close to him. And what does it say about us, the fans? Most didn’t sing that song, of course, but many have, and anyway he was on the receiving end of more than his fair share of abuse just for wearing the red shirt.

We’ll never take him to heart but I believe he will receive a warm welcome tomorrow and he will earn our respect if he gives of his best, as his former team-mate and fellow subversive Willy Gallas has done. Fans of all clubs are often accused of hypocrisy and there’s truth there. However, our loyalty is like no other in sport, in life perhaps, and that loyalty, blind, crazy, illogical, harmful, unwavering and unstinting, is to the shirt, to the club. Our club. That’s the point from all this.

In my own silly immature way, when Manu first comes over to the centre Shelf tomorrow, I’ll shout his name and applaud. He’ll hear me and I like to think it will mean something but it won’t. And if he scores, and runs over to the fans, and the fans sing his name, if he winks and raises an eyebrow in ironic surprise, I wouldn’t begrudge him his moment. Good luck to you, Manu. You’re one of us now and we’ll look after you.