Footballer Profile - Emmanuel Adebayor

One way or another, Emmanuel Adebayor has certainly made an impact in his few months at Manchester City. What with his controversial goal celebration against his former club and some vital goals, the former African Player of the Year has hardly been out of the headlines. He even managed to score one of the most bizarre own goals of the season in the victory over Chelsea when he was accidentally hit on the back by a Shay Given save and put the visitors ahead. He did manage to hit an equaliser later in the half, though.

Adebayor has often been involved in controversy of one kind or another since his arrival in English football in January, 2006. Arsene Wenger doesn't like signing players in the January transfer window, we're often led to believe. He apparently prefers to have the players signed during the summer to give them more time to settle into the team properly. Adebayor, though, came from a Monaco team he had helped reach the Champions League final the previous season, for what was reported to be a £3 million transfer fee.

Although he scored 62 goals in 143 games for Arsenal - an extremely good scoring ratio - as a player, Emmanuel was never really loved by many of the Arsenal faithful. There were some fine goals - including what was judged the Goal of the Season in 2007/08. However, there was also the sending off in a Carling Cup Final against Chelsea, when he truculently didn't leave the field. Even more disturbing was the clash with his own teammate, Nicklas Bendtner when the north London team were thrashed by their local rivals, Tottenham.

Mainly, though, it was probably the fact that many fans thought Adebayor was using the Emirates as simply a stopping off point for a season or two that really annoyed them. In the summer of 2008, the player and his agent appeared to be doing everything to try to engineer a move to one of the European 'giants' of Barcelona or Milan - instead of focussing on taking Arsenal to the same level.