Former United captain and current Ipswich manager Roy Keane has defended Emmanuel Adebayor after his controversial celebration in front of Arsenal fans on Saturday. The £25 Million striker was slated for kicking out at Robin Van Persie and running the whole length of the pitch to show his delight at scoring against his former employers – which happened to be in front of the Arsenal faithful. However, United legend Keane – who is never short of a controversial remark – has defended the striker.
Roy Keane had his fair share of criticism over the years with United – for both his on field antics and post match comments. Keane believes that people should forget about the behavior of Emmanuel Adebayor – because he has since apologised. Keane was quoted as saying:
“Fair play to the boy, I think he’s apologised after the game.
“He probably knows he’s done a bit wrong. The Arsenal fans were clearly frustrated with his behaviour, but players make mistakes. When he scored he got a bit carried away.
“We shouldn’t go over board on him. I think we should go easy on the boy. He’s apologised and from my point of view, if he was one of my players I’d hope everybody would leave it at that.”
The goal celebration was the obvious talking point of the weekend’s football. The fact that a former player of a club – a club that helped him achieve a monumental season in 2007/08 – would run ninety yards and slide on his knees in ecstasy to basically give two fingers up to the people who gave him stick towards the end of his Arsenal career, for me, is just wrong.
We all remember the Gary Neville celebration against Liverpool back in 2005. Hilarious as it was – and yes I am fully aware a last minute goal against your bitter rivals is as good as its gets, especially as captain – you need to be professional in the way that you conduct yourself. I fully understand the abuse that players have to put up with from opposing fans – especially your arch rivals and to an extend I understand and side with Neville – but to do it against your former clubs fans simply because they questioned your work rate and dedication – is that acceptable? Should players be allowed to run up to the opposition and taunt them? Kiss their badge of the new club (yep, even Rooney did it)?
I expect Steven Gerrard, the captain of Liverpool, to love scoring and celebrating against Manchester United, I expect Steve Bruce to celebrate if his Sunderland team score a goal against United – but I wouldn’t expect Cristiano Ronaldo, Diego Forlan, Mikael Silvestre or Ruud VanNistelrooy to run the whole length of the pitch to confront the fans that once adored them. I can’t see the right in it.
Agreed. Celebrating in front of your rivals is probably understandable if not condonable. Taunting your old club’s fans is really ungrateful, it’s not even as though they were taunting him unfairly, the guy was lazy as out last season and probably worse than Cristiano in trying to engineer move to a bigger club. He’s a wanker and I’d give him stick too. Plus he’s a mental face stamper. Sick man.
shut up roy you prick
I’m not sticking up for him because I’ve always despised his character (typical Wenger creation) – he did get an incredible amount of stick from the Arsenal fans because his last season wasn’t as good as the season before. He was seen to be not trying. He wanted out. His reaction however was ridiculous. Had he scored at that end then I could understand it, however running the full length of the pitch? Stupid and inciteful, far worse than Neville’s.
You could argue that Adebayor’s last two seasons had a parallel with Ronaldo’s. The difference being that in his last season United fans still got behind Ronaldo and he talks fondly of his time at the club. There will be some indifference from the support if ever Ronaldo returns playing another club but at the same time there is a respect from Ronaldo to the club and I would expect that he would celebrate any goal in the manner he did when he scored for us against Sporting.
Regardless of this one thing I will say is that what Adebayor did was no excuse for the Arsenal fans reaction – knocking a steward unconcious, even if it was a City employee! – and throwing a chair onto the pitch. The Arsenal supporters have been given a really easy ride over this.
Another thing is, I find it a little peculiar how you can have someone like Adebayor being a total div and inciting 2,000 fans and then you have someone like Gerrard who scores, runs and kisses the camera (winding up not only those in attendance but also millions around the world) and nothing really is said about it. Is it because the gesture has to be something directly to those in attendance? I would still argue that such an act is.
I’m not that bothered about it, I just think it’s a valid point to make regarding incitement. Though of course we all know about Liverpool’s immunity from such sanctions these days.
In any event, the egg was on Stevie Me’s face after the Macheda incident.