That is the question dear friends.
I am referring to Emanuel Adebayor, and I am talking about whether he will or whether he won’t make it at Arsenal as a top premiership striker.
We had a good day at the Emirates on Saturday, which started with our train pulling in to Liverpool Street station at half past eleven. This early start left ample time for a couple of good pub sessions prior to the game culminating in an excellent few pints of Courage Directors in the Wetherspoons White Swan pub at Highbury Corner.
It was an absolutely glorious sunny day, with another three points and a gritty – if not very attractive – performance against a side only really capable of defending in the old Bolton ‘lets kick their heads in’ style.
Cesc was perhaps a trifle lucky not to get a second yellow for a foul on Campo (who was the only Premiership quality player on display for Bolton) but I’m still a little unsure what his first yellow was for. We all know what a tosser Riley is, but how he ignored the most blatant of penalties when the mighty Clich got both tripped and pulled down in the penalty area after a wonderful run, was simply beyond belief.
But back to the point of this blogpost. Let me start straight away by saying that I think Adey is great; he is a good team man and is loved by the fans. He seems to have everything – lovely ball control, fine strength, great speed, good in the air (apart from one dreadful miss on Saturday), a super target man – but regrettably what he can’t do at the moment is finish. I know he scored a great goal against the brethren from the east the other week (oh what a laugh it was to see them let in another three goals last night), but generally his ratio of goal attempts to goals scored is crap. Now we all hope that it will start to click one day, but currently it just aint happening for him.
Scoring against the bottom clubs is one thing but we can’t expect to get more than a couple of good chances against the other top three title contenders, and when those chances come along we have to have someone who can take them. If we leave out our big Dane from this debate for the moment, we only really have Eduardo as a natural finisher.
Theo had a great introduction on Saturday and together with Tomas effectively changed the game, cos we never looked like scoring up to then. But I personally think it looks unlikely that Theo is going to blossom and develop fully this season, at least as a goal scorer.
So Adey has got to get his shooting boots working if we are going to win the Premier League this season.
Perhaps he will tonight.
Bloody good luck to him anyway.