Who said Arsenal doesn’t have an agenda?

Legend goes that “hell hath no fury than a woman scorned”. I think after the dust settling this past weekend, it wouldn’t be off the mark to revise this assertion to “hell hath no fury than an ego scorned”. The movie would sound something like “Sheyi Emmanuel Adebayor: The day of reckoning”.

The headlines should have been dominated by media hacks waxing lyrical about the arrival of Manchester City on the big stage, but Ade-bye-ego had other ideas. He clearly wasn’t having any of that. It undoubtedly takes some talent to cloud a gallant performance with master strokes of idiotic actions that the resident quack would find hard to rationalize.

There’s an on-going debate that is quite intriguing. On the one hand, you have the school of thought that suggests that Arsenal’s reaction in general and Robin Van Persie’s in particular after Saturday’s defeat to Manchester City, smirks of sour grapes and should have been handled better. The suggestion of course is that Van Persie’s statement following the horrific incident with Ade-bye-ego was a totally unnecessary over-reaction. It’s the good old fashioned Arsenal whining and having a whinge.

The other school of thought is that Van Persie has eloquently taken a stand and it’s a new approach that should be embraced. Football is a physical game but as a club, Arsenal is prepared to draw the line on assault. There’s this myth that the only way to beat Arsenal is to literally kick them off the park. I’m sure Arsenal players can actually take care of themselves on the pitch, but we have to draw a line on our players being assaulted.

My take on this issue is deeper than what I think is being seen on the surface. The main victims of Ade-bye-ego’s aggression were (in no particular order), Arsenal fans, Cesc Fabregas and Robin Van Persie. I don’t mind that he scored against us, the probability that the striker of another team scoring a goal is a viable one. Some will even argue that he shouldn’t have been on the pitch by then, but such is football. Arsenal is big enough to take that and I am very much of the opinion that we should embrace the defeat, take our lessons, remedy them on Wednesday and move right along.

Matt Lawton of the Daily Mail has written an interesting article about the roots of Ade-bye-ego’s rampage. It’s worth a read.

There was clearly some unfinished business and the events on Saturday were predictable by any given measure. What is shocking though is the scale of the aggression and intent to maime his ex-colleagues, and in particular, Van Persie and Fabregas who have been a “direct threat” to his super stardom status. I don’t see any other way of looking at it. If someone had attacked Robin Van Persie down the street in the way Ade-bye-ego did, they’d be attending a court hearing this morning at the local magistrate’s court charged with assault.

Gunnerblog has quite a revealing angle of this incident, and it’s worth looking at in the clear light of day.

The Greater Manchester Police have also officially commented on and have condemned the antics of Ade-bye-ego and in particular, they are concerned that his actions in celebrating his goal, were responsible for creating a pressure point in the game that could have resulted in an ugly crowd incident.

A spokeswoman from the Greater Manchester Police said:

“A player in a goal celebration caused the opposition
fans to be aggravated and there was a crowd surge. An object has been thrown
and caught a steward and knocked him out. It’s down to the club, ground
security and FA whether they want to take the incident any further.”

The Manchester Police have pretty much left it to either Arsenal FC, Manchester City (will turkeys vote for Christmas?) or the FA to make an official complaint for them to investigate. The assault on Van Persie should be thrown in if you ask me.

I’m sure Soho Square will be busy today trying to sort out the fix that Ade-bye-ego has put them in. However, I want to spare my final thought on an angle of this whole issue that I feel is not being given enough air time.

Within an hour of the defeat at Eastlands, Arsenal pretty much grabbed the news cycle by releasing the Van Persie statement. You can call it a whinge or a whine, or you can call it a brave and overdue stand by the player and the club. I call it one of the best media savvy moves I’ve seen in a long time.

I’m sure the team has a lot to think about the defeat, and I’m sure the fans have a lot of pent up frustration about losing another match. But what the Arsenal machinery has done, is ensure that the agenda they want is running the media cycle. The team can quietly put the house in order, and the supporters save face by making Ade-bye-ego the villain. You’ve got to love that.

I always thought Ivan Gazidis was a class act.