Nicolas Analysis
by Myles Palmer
FEATURES
THE ARSENAL AGM - FULL WRITE UP
FIVE REASONS: ARSENAL COULD WIN IN BARCELONA
CARLTON AND ITV UPSET US AGAIN
JEKYLL AND HYDE PLAY THE NOU CAMP
Anelka won't come back !
On Tuesday at 2.15 pm I had just got home from the Mercury Music Prize Nominations and the phone rang.
My tabloid pal Hughie said:"Anelka's staying at Arsenal."
Ceefax confirmed Anelka had been taken off the transfer list. He was expected to resume full training. I doubt that!
It has been 72 days. I have kept quiet about Anelka for 72 days.
The last time I wrote about him was on May 17th, just after the Aston Villa game. I have waited for Anelka to go for 72 days. I have suffered the Chinese water torture of his proposed departure, the incessant drip, drip, drip of news and speculation in this, the most squalid transfer saga of the 20th century.
I refused to write about the Anelka fiasco because I did not want to sit in a sewer and add to it.
Anelka says: the only club I want to play for is Marseilles. And: the only club I want to play for is Real Madrid. And: the only club I want to play for is Lazio.
On Monday June 21st Lazio set a deadline which was the middle of that week ! A deadline on their £21 million bid being accepted.
We were told that a £70,000-a-week wage deal had been agreed in Nice on Friday when Anelka's agents met Lazio's agent Vincenzo Morabito.
Both parties agreed in principle to a five-year contract worth
£10m net, with an option for another three years.
But five weeks later Anelka was still in limbo.
And Arsenal took him off the transfer list.
On Tuesday afternoon they said they expect him to return to full training. He is expected back this week. Yes, this week. Not tomorrow. This week.
Does this mean Wenger is giving him a few days to sort his head out before coming back?
I think he will go on strike. I don't think he will come back.
He has four years left on his contract. He is in a very weak legal position.
He is lucky that Arsenal have not, as far as we know, stopped his wages.
Why have they not stopped his wages? Because Wenger always believed
there was a chance that he could persuade him to stay, if only
for one more season.
And anyway Anelka is not an all-round centre forward. At 20 (he was 20 in March) he is a brilliant novice. Yes, he scored 17 goals last season.
Yes, he is a key member of the team. Yes, his pace and skill are very important, and very, very hard to replace. But what has been forgotten , amid all the hype about a £22 million deal, is that Anelka is a limited striker.
He has greyhound acceleration and two great feet, but he is a
very limited player who has been showcased in a high-tempo team
which Wenger has built round him.
Overall, Dwight Yorke is a better striker. Fowler is better. Hasselbaink is better. Klinsmann was ten times better than Anelka. Why? Because Anelka cannot head the ball. He is not good at volleying or making near-post runs. He can dribble and shoot, but he cannot consistently find teammates in the box. He would struggle at Lazio, both tactically and socially. He is not ready for Serie A.
Wenger knows this. He has never said it in as many words, but he knows a move now is wrong for Anelka's career and wrong for France, who need his speed and his goals.
Back in February, when I wrote Nicolas Enigma Mouths Off Again, we had e-mails saying : Lay off the kid! Get off his back !
I said he was a problem then, and that was when things were going well. He was fit. He was the first choice centre forward. He had made the No 9 shirt his own. He scored two goals for France at Wembley. He was scoring goals from great passes by Bergkamp, Petit and Vieira.
Anelka is the moodiest and most ungrateful player Arsenal have ever employed.
Wenger must be gutted. What more could he have done for the kid? He plucks him from obscurity and turns him into a rich, world famous international. Not to mention building a team round him. Always remember that small matter. The fact that Petit and Bergkamp, especially, made Anelka look better than he was.
Wenger created a high-tempo team that allowed Anelka to do the things he's good at, and doesn't ask him to do the things he's useless at, like heading and getting onto the end of crosses.
And how does Anelka repay his manager? By hiding in an obscure cheap hotel in Martinique while his stupid brothers talk telephone numbers on their mobiles.
The tragedy is that the soap opera is now bigger than the football.
The football is secondary these days. The games off the field are what make the headlines.
Tuesday July 27th 1999