When will Spurs get their Ade back?

10Jan 2013

Premier League

Emmanuel Adebayor will be wearing the shirt of Togo rather than Tottenham for the next few weeks as he heads to the African Cup of Nations but Spurs fans are wondering when the Ade of 2010-11 will return to White Hart Lane. Spurs blogger Windy fills us in...

Is he lacking confidence? Has he stopped trying now that he has a permanent contract? or has he just lost his mojo? Whatever the cause, something is not quite right with Emmanuel Adebayor.

One of Tottenham's best players last year - the only man in the Premier League to achieve double figures in both goals and assists - he has been a shadow of that player so far this time around.

A statistic recently repeated en masse on Twitter is that we have won 88% of games without Adebayor (seven wins from eight), and only 38% with him (five wins from 13) in the Premier League. The stats are somewhat skewed, however. Firstly, of the eight teams that Spurs have played without him in the squad, only Manchester United and Liverpool are in the top half of the table. Secondly, in five of the eight matches that we didn't win with him, he played 33 minutes or fewer.

Personally, I feel that his lack of form has been slightly over-played given the circumstances. While the goals have not flowed, he has shown that he is still capable of holding up the ball and linking play; it's worth noting that he was very impressive away at the Etihad, where he led the line alone with Dempsey in support from a deeper position.

That said, there are clearly issues; he was no doubt affected by a lack of pre-season at Manchester City, has been disrupted by niggling injuries, and of course had a self-inflicted break due to suspension. As a result he has not found any form of rhythm as yet. He seems also to be struggling with confidence, and a missed chance from close range against Sunderland will not have helped. He seems less keen to take defenders on this season, this being the case again in the FA Cup tie with Coventry.

The biggest reason for his lack of productivity in my opinion, though, is his partnership with Jermain Defoe. The England international has notoriously struggled to form partnerships, and they have only managed two goals between them in the six league games that they have both started - they simply don't seem to gel. In comparison, last season Adebayor excelled with the creative majesty of Rafael van der Vaart just behind him.

Defoe's scoring form has been relatively good and, with Clint Dempsey starting to regain confidence and find the goal-scoring knack too, many fans are calling for Adebayor to be dropped, and for Dempsey to be brought in behind Defoe. With two away games and Manchester United at home in January, this month should offer a good snapshot of Spurs' top-four pretensions - they are 2.1 to finish the season in the Champions League qualification positions.

Those fans will get their wish for the next few weeks at least with Adebayor joining up with the Togo squad for the Africa Cup of Nations. From a Spurs point of view, let's hope that he finds his goal-scoring form in South Africa - if you fancy him to do well, it might be worth backing Togo at 80.0, with lay potential later on. Be warned, though - they have a tough group!