Mauricio Pochettino has revealed that he always wanted Emmanuel Adebayor to stay at Tottenham Hotspur, as he looks to put the unsettling nature of the January transfer period behind him and his squad.
Adebayor was one of a number of players who either wanted to leave White Hart Lane last month or were the subject of intense speculation. In the end, he was denied a loan move to West Ham United – the Spurs chairman, Daniel Levy, refused to sanction it because of the ill feeling between the clubs – while Younès Kaboul, Étienne Capoue and Paulinho also stayed.
Aaron Lennon pushed for a loan move and got it on deadline day – to Everton – and he followed Kyle Naughton out of the club, the right-back having completed a permanent £5m transfer to Swansea City earlier in the month.
Pochettino has found himself caught in the middle of the situation between Adebayor, Levy and the club’s fans, some of whom have booed the striker, partly because of the comments he made after the home loss to Stoke City on 9 November, when he said that there was a negative atmosphere at White Hart Lane.
However, before Saturday’s north London derby at home to Arsenal, Pochettino said that it was time for everybody to pull together and for each player to remember the terms of his contract.
“Maybe only the 11 players who play are happy,” Pochettino said. “This is football. Sometimes, there are players like Aaron who was very honest with me. He said: ‘I accept your decision but I want to play more, and I have the possibility to go to another club, and I want to go’. I said: ‘OK’. It’s true I never promised my players that they will play.
“It’s easy to identify the players who aren’t happy because they’ve not played much in the last few months. But we are a club. And when you sign a contract as a player, you need to understand that you don’t sign to play, you sign to train. And then the club signs a manager or head coach to pick the players. This is football.”
Pochettino said that Lennon was the only player who had been to see him to inform him that he wanted to leave. With Adebayor, he said, it had become a club matter – in other words, one for Levy – but Pochettino said that he was pleased with how the situation had ended up, even though Adebayor remains at the bottom of the pecking order up front.
“I knew he could go and I would have been happy to play with two strikers [Harry Kane and Roberto Soldado] for the rest of the season,” Pochettino said. “Possibly, we could have used [Nacer] Chadli or [Erik] Lamela [up front] but the first thing was that I wanted to keep Adebayor. It is important to clarify that.
“It’s important that the fans forget the past. We are in a key moment. We need to put out the bad things, the bad energy and try to help each other. Adebayor is much better, he is a long way towards recovering his confidence but, after that, it’s my decision, a football decision.”
