Arsenal

Nomadic Anelka deserves a bit of respect

By Neil Jones ⋅ January 19, 2008 ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

The sight of Nicolas Anelka in his Chelsea shirt may well have been met by sighs of disappointment from many football folk, not least the already-fragile Tottenham defenders who had enjoyed a stress-free hour marking the immobile and non-threatening Claudio Pizarro.

Managers of lesser clubs (such as Bolton) will have taken his £15m move to Stamford Bridge as a sign that holding onto your best players is a futile quest when one of the Big Four gets involved.

And cynics will have taken Anelka’s arrival at his EIGHTH different club as a sign that leopards indeed do not change their spots. Anelka does not have many friends or sympathizers in the media, that’s for sure.

And yet there is the other view. The view that Anelka deserves a club the size of Chelsea at which to showcase his outstanding talent and ability.

That he is correct in believing that he is too good a player for a club like Bolton, and that his “Le Sulk” tag is more than just a tad overplayed.

That hilariously original tag first surfaced when Anelka was a teenager tearing up trees at Arsenal, having been snapped up from Paris St Germain as a 17-year-old in 1997. Back then, Anelka is rumoured to have accused his Dutch team-mates Marc Overmars and Dennis Bergkamp of “passing only to each other”- a comment that (if true) can surely be attributed to the naivety of youth rather than anything more sinister.

Anelka was a sensation at Highbury, helping them to the Double in 1998 and picking up the PFA Young Player of the Year award the year after (although he attracted further criticism when he failed to turn up to collect his award), before a controversial transfer saga saw him engineer a move to Real Madrid with the help of his brother Claude, who was acting as his agent and mouthpiece.

Some football fans have never forgiven him for the way he left Arsenal. Various grumblings surfaced in the British media from Anelka, he wasn’t paid well enough, he wasn’t appreciated, Arsenal weren’t a big enough club for him. And in the end he got his move to Madrid, whilst Arsenal pocketed £23m - not bad going when you consider they only spent £10.5m of it on Anelka’s replacement, Thierry Henry.

The fallout from the move was that he was portrayed as someone who was driven by money, disrespectful to his team-mates and his manager, and therefore he became tarnished with the “trouble-maker” tag. It’s a tag that seems to have stuck, in the same way that for Jose Mourinho we read “charismatic” or for John Terry it’s “a born leader”, Anelka’s tagline will always read “moody”, “sulky” or “selfish”.

Anelka struggled to adapt to life in Spain, John Toshack’s Real Madrid side did not suit him, and he did not suit them. He made mistakes - at one point he received a club ban for refusing to train - but failing to make an impact at one of the biggest clubs in the world as a 20-year-old is no shame.

Despite picking up a Champions League winner’s medal, Anelka left the Bernabeu after just one season, returning to his home-town club for £20m. It was a move that raised eyebrows, not least Anelka’s - as soon as he arrived, the club descended into a spiral of financial woe, and performances on the field dipped. Anelka scored just ten times in his second stint at the Parc des Princes and as the club’s situation and form worsened, he was sent on loan to Gerard Houllier’s Liverpool in December 2001.

Liverpool fans today still hold Anelka in high regard, despite just four goals in twenty appearances, they had been apprehensive about signing a player with a reputation for being selfish and lazy, yet they were delighted to find that neither adjective had been fairly attached to Anelka.

His work rate and creativity helped the Reds to their highest Premier League finish of second place, and one game at home to Newcastle saw Anelka at his very best, running the Toon ragged as Liverpool came out 3-0 winners. He was expected to sign on a permanent basis in the summer of 2002, but Houllier opted instead to sign Senegal’s World Cup star El-Hadji Diouf instead - a player who certainly deserves Anelka’s “Bad boy” tag more than the man himself.

It was a baffling move, a move that looked even more so the following season as Diouf netted just three league goals, whilst Anelka managed fourteen at his new club Manchester City (including both goals in a City victory at Anfield would you believe). He was an instant favourite at Maine Road, he worked hard, he scored goals, he made goals. But again he was plagued by off-the-field rumours.

Robbie Fowler mentions in his book that he “smacked a kid in training one day”, whilst also confirming that “Joey Barton had a right go at him at half time in one match”, although incurring the wrath of Mr Barton does not single Anelka out as a trouble maker in any way, shape or form.

The stats speak for themselves; Anelka scored 46 goals in 103 games for City, in a consistently inconsistent side and often alongside strike partners such as Paolo Wanchope, Darren Huckerby and a misfiring Fowler. He eventually grew tired of City’s mediocrity (ninth in 2003, 16th in ‘04), and was offloaded in January 2005 to Turkish side Fenerbahce, where he managed 14 goals in 39 games, helping them to the Turkish Championship inside his first five months.

Off the field, he also seemed to find his feet. He converted to Islam, and got married. But it was no surprise that he was tempted back to the Premier League in 2006, although the same cannot be said for the fact that he joined Sam Allardyce’s Bolton Wanderers.

Again, people criticised Allardyce, they asked whether Anelka would fit in to Bolton’s hard working ethos, whether he would care enough to perform consistently for them. And yet again they were proven wrong. Anelka became the focal point as Bolton secured a European place by finishing seventh in the league - thanks in no small part to the Frenchman’s hold up play, tireless running and goals. Their fans rejoiced when he put pen to paper on a new four year contract as recently as August, but Bolton are struggling, they are not a great side, and to turn down a move to a club such as Chelsea would have been foolish, and Anelka is no fool. Neither is Roman Abramovich, who sanctioned the £15m deal after listening to his coaches rave about him.

And predictably, and probably infuriatingly for the headline writers, in the thirty two minutes he played against Spurs on Saturday, Anelka showed exactly why so many clubs and managers are willing to look beyond the media tags and the past indiscretions to put their faith in him.

His quality is unquestionable, whilst his work rate and unselfish running remains very much out of sync with his reputation for being an individual rather than a team player. His half hour cameo deserved a goal, and were it not for a fine Radek Cerny stop, and the thickness of a coat of paint on the crossbar, he would have got one.

Even so, he yet again showed there is more to Nicolas Anelka than lazy headlines and even lazier nicknames. Chelsea will feel it is £15m well spent.

Anelka to spur Chelsea on to league glory?
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