Adebayor or Cole?

[flash gunner]

I think i hate Ade more for everything that Cole did and said (£55,000 crashing his care etc) i dont think he would have celebrated like that

[DB10GOONER]

Not before his own betrayed him..

I don't think we betrayed him. At the time what he was offered wasn't unreasonable. How much money do these crunts need to live on?! What his short-sited greed failed to take into account was that what we offered him wasn't his last pay rise. He would have been given more pay rises with each contract renewal. No, he got all billy big bollocks and wanted the money then and there. The pictures of him on Hello or OK or whatever the fuck magazine cover it was for his wedding said everything there is to say about that little bollocks; he thought his scruff and him were gonna be the next "Posh and Becks".

I agree on two points

firstly - Cole probably did deserve the rise he claimed for no matter how badly he went about it

secondly - I never saw (correct me if I am wrong) Cole giving less than 100% in an Arsenal jersey when he played for us

Neither can be said about that other *word censored*

so its Ade for me

Accepted, he was a very good player for us but would you call going on the piss with the likes of Terry and Lampard a couple of days before the Champions League final giving 100% to the cause?

[ambarron]

Granted that dosent sound to professional but I just think he always gave 100% to the jersey when he played

i dnot want it to sound like I respect the guy......I dont and the Ade incident shouldnt cloud that

Just ADE is worse in my opinion!!!

[DB10GOONER]

Granted that dosent sound to professional but I just think he always gave 100% to the jersey when he played

i dnot want it to sound like I respect the guy......I dont and the Ade incident shouldnt cloud that

Just ADE is worse in my opinion!!!

I suppose it really is just a matter of opinion alright. Either way, they are both despicable crunts!

[Bergkamp-Genius]

Not before his own betrayed him..

I don't think we betrayed him. At the time what he was offered wasn't unreasonable. How much money do these crunts need to live on?! What his short-sited greed failed to take into account was that what we offered him wasn't his last pay rise. He would have been given more pay rises with each contract renewal. No, he got all billy big bollocks and wanted the money then and there. The pictures of him on Hello or OK or whatever the fuck magazine cover it was for his wedding said everything there is to say about that little bollocks; he thought his scruff and him were gonna be the next "Posh and Becks".

'Wasn't unreasonable'....come on we are talking about the crazy world of premiership football not the gas board..Cole could have got far more than he was asking from us elsewhere... the club new that..but they thought they were being clever because they thought they were in a no lose situation..they thought they could get away with paying him less than he was worth because he was a fan and worst case scenario if he didn't like it they had Clichy waiting in the wings..

Just imagine you were in a performance related job and you had been doing very well of late... far better than most around you doing the same job... but were on less money than them.. say £500 a week... the firm round the corner offers you £1000 a week for doing the same job in recognition of how good at your job you had become...so you go back to your boss and tell him what you have been offered and tell him you are happy at the firm and would accept £750 a week..your boss comes back and tells you i'll give you £650 a week in full knowledge that you are worth a £1000 a week and he is getting you cheap at £750 a week...would you be disappointed...f*cking right you would because your boss was taking the piss..
.So you leave and your firm brings in another guy not as good as you who has proved nothing at the firm and pays him £1000 a week..would you feel vindicated for leaving..too f*cking right you would.. fan or no fan..

Your looking at this from a fans view DB and what you think you would do in Coles situation.. you need to take the crazy numbers involved out of the equation and just look at it as a question of who was right and who was wrong... in reality whether you love the club you play for or not if they are trying to f*ck you over because they think they can get away with it..at some point you need to make a stand otherwise they will keep taking advantage of your loyalty to your detriment...why should the mercenaries get looked after better than you just because you happen to love the club you play for.. it should be working the other way around but with us it rarely does..

[DB10GOONER]

Not before his own betrayed him..

I don't think we betrayed him. At the time what he was offered wasn't unreasonable. How much money do these crunts need to live on?! What his short-sited greed failed to take into account was that what we offered him wasn't his last pay rise. He would have been given more pay rises with each contract renewal. No, he got all billy big bollocks and wanted the money then and there. The pictures of him on Hello or OK or whatever the fuck magazine cover it was for his wedding said everything there is to say about that little bollocks; he thought his scruff and him were gonna be the next "Posh and Becks".

'Wasn't unreasonable'....come on we are talking about the crazy world of premiership football not the gas board..Cole could have got far more than he was asking from us elsewhere... the club new that..but they thought they were being clever because they thought they were in a no lose situation..they thought they could get away with paying him less than he was worth because he was a fan and worst case scenario if he didn't like it they had Clichy waiting in the wings..

Just imagine you were in a performance related job and you had been doing very well of late... far better than most around you doing the same job... but were on less money than them.. say £500 a week... the firm round the corner offers you £1000 a week for doing the same job in recognition of how good at your job you had become...so you go back to your boss and tell him what you have been offered and tell him you are happy at the firm and would accept £750 a week..your boss comes back and tells you i'll give you £650 a week in full knowledge that you are worth a £1000 a week and he is getting you cheap at £750 a week...would you be disappointed...f*cking right you would because your boss was taking the piss..
.So you leave and your firm brings in another guy not as good as you who has proved nothing at the firm and pays him £1000 a week..would you feel vindicated for leaving..too f*cking right you would.. fan or no fan..

Your looking at this from a fans view DB and what you think you would do in Coles situation.. you need to take the crazy numbers involved out of the equation and just look at it as a question of who was right and who was wrong... in reality whether you love the club you play for or not if they are trying to f*ck you over because they think they can get away with it..at some point you need to make a stand otherwise they will keep taking advantage of your loyalty to your detriment...why should the mercenaries get looked after better than you just because you happen to love the club you play for.. it should be working the other way around but with us it rarely does..

Of course I am looking at it (primarily) from a fan's viewpoint - that's what I am. That is why we are talking about who we hate and why we hate them! I hate him because he is a devious lying scumbag. Simple as.

I understand your viewpoint but cannot agree. Football is not like any other business. For a start, you simply cannot compare someone earning £50K - £100K a week with someone earning £500 a week. In my job I've had a 14% pay cut forced upon me. The senior management team justify this by saying they too have a 14% pay cut. Now it doesn't take a genius to figure out that 14% from less than a grand a week is going to have a whole different effect on quality of life than 14% from FIVE GRAND a week, does it?

I cannot condone Cole's betrayal because he felt undervalued in his job. Poor him. No one should look past the crazy numbers involved; the whole point IS the crazy numbers involved. How much does a person need to live comfortably? I raise this point because it shows Cole's hypocracy; he continually talked up his being a true Arsenal fan, yet his true motivation was money, not playing for the club he "supported and loved from childhood". As a fan I find his actions disgusting. To be in a "job" doing something you love doing, for the club you supposedly love and to be paid massive ammounts of money for the privelage??!! AND STILL IT'S NOT ENOUGH???!! And believe me £50k+ a week IS massive money; I'll wager not one person on this forum even KNOWS someone on that type of money...

But the crux of the issue (and from a pragmatic viewpoint) is that Cole touted himself to Kenyon in JANUARY 2005 - long before his contract was due to expire and long before he actually left for the Chavs - a meeting he made INSTEAD of a proposed meeting with Wenger and Dein. This was DURING his contract negotiations with Arsenal. Nothing had been confirmed yet, maybe he could have negotiated for more money, maybe not.

That for me is the first point of betrayal. BY COLE. For me, "who was right and who was wrong" is easy. Cole was wrong. As was proven by the inquiry. Read this article;

Cole text claim untrue, says Viera

Marcus Christenson
Saturday June 4, 2005
The Guardian

Ashley Cole was told by Patrick Vieira to demand £80,000 a week during contract negotiations with Arsenal, according to statements submitted by his agent to the Premier League inquiry into the Chelsea "tapping up" affair.
Last night Arsenal's captain, in a statement issued through the club, said: "I categorically deny sending any such text message. It simply is not true."

This added to the complexity of the picture revealed by the disciplinary commission's publication of its verdict on the meeting at the Royal Park Hotel on January 27.

The documentation also referred to the preceding "bad-tempered and acrimonious" meetings over Cole's future between his agent Jonathan Barnett and the Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein.
The three-man commission, led by the former law lord Sir Philip Otton, declared the discussions "a sophisticated game of bluff" and conveyed the difficulty it had in reconciling the parties' conflicting depositions.

The inquiry heard that during those negotiations Barnett showed Dein a text message on his mobile phone that he claimed to be from Vieira and that told Cole "not to accept less than £80k".

Though Otton cast a measure of doubt as to whether that message's true provenance was the Arsenal captain's own mobile phone, the evidence submitted to the inquiry by Cole's agent and Chelsea's chief executive Peter Kenyon paints a negative picture of what the England left-back thinks about his club.

Kenyon declared that Barnett had told him, in the presence of Cole, that Arsenal is "primarily run by the French boys" and that his relationship with his manager Arsène Wenger was "not good".

"[Cole said] he was concerned that his relationship with the manager was not good, that there was definitely a series of cliques and that the club was primarily run by the French boys," Kenyon reported of the meeting at the Royal Park Hotel.

"As to the relationship, to our surprise, he indicated he was not happy with it. He then seemed very unhappy about the way that contract negotiations had taken place, with the distinct impression that the manager didn't support it and that there had been some kind of back-tracking.

"[Cole intimated] that he thought they were getting somewhere and for some reason, which he did not go into, there had been a fairly major turnaround in the negotiations. That is what had led to him and Barnett reiterating on numerous occasions during the meeting that he would not be staying at Arsenal after the end of his contract."

At no point does the document mention a denial of these statements from Cole. Before January's meeting with Chelsea, Cole had told Dein in a telephone conversation of his upset at Arsenal's stance in his contract negotiations.

Even so, Dein was under the impression that he and Wenger, whom the document describes as having been "extremely anxious not to lose Cole," would meet the player on January 27 or 28. Instead, Cole met Chelsea.

Otton's verdict rejects Kenyon's explanation that he and Jose Mourinho had merely attended the meeting with Cole, Barnett and the agent Pini Zahavi to listen to Cole.

"We are satisfied," said Otton's document, "on the balance of probabilities, that Kenyon and Mourinho were sufficiently interested in the possibility of signing Cole that they did not make the journey merely to listen to Cole's grievances.

"We are driven to the conclusion we must reject the 'we only went along to listen' explanation and safely infer that there was an active discussion between all present on the basis that Cole was going to be up for sale in the near future.

"They (Kenyon and Mourinho) played an active role in discussion and explored the prospect of acquiring him (Cole). This amounted to an approach with 'a view to negotiating a contract'."

Cole's lawyers are set to submit on Monday morning an appeal against his £100,000 fine. Chelsea's appeal against their £300,000 fine will take longer to formulate. Mourinho, who was fined £200,000, will also contest the findings through his club.

However the commission's statements indicate its sentiments about the Chelsea manager's conduct in the affair: "[Mourinho] was at first reluctant, not because such a meeting might infringe Premier League rules but because the previous day had been his birthday and a match and he was looking forward to a day off at home with his wife and children. An opportunity to meet secretly Ashley Cole face to face was too much of a temptation."

Chelsea accept their culpability according to the rules as they stand but will appeal against the size of their fines on the grounds that they are no more guilty than Cole and should have received equal punishment. Cole will continue to contest his guilt on the grounds that the rule on illegal approaches constitutes a restraint of trade.

He is a judas. I cannot understand ANY Arsenal supporter justifying, defending or condoning his actions.

Football is all about passion, love of the game, love of club. To endear yourself to a club's fans by stating you are one of them, and then touting yourself to not only your club's rivals, but relatively local rivals for a few extra grand is unforgivable.

If he had waited out his contract and then said, "Look, I want to move on, find a new challenge" or "I want to earn more elsewhere, you are not offering enough" I would not have had a problem with him. At least it would be honest and done in the open at the appropriate time.

But he touted himself behind our club's back and behind all our backs (in fairness, having Cashley behind your back is the LAST place you want him!).

It should also be noted he was upset at there being "too many Frenchies at the club" (I paraphrase!). So on top of being a greedy, lying little toe rag, he is also a xenophobic little crunt too! Wonderful.

[Bergkamp-Genius]

Not before his own betrayed him..

I don't think we betrayed him. At the time what he was offered wasn't unreasonable. How much money do these crunts need to live on?! What his short-sited greed failed to take into account was that what we offered him wasn't his last pay rise. He would have been given more pay rises with each contract renewal. No, he got all billy big bollocks and wanted the money then and there. The pictures of him on Hello or OK or whatever the fuck magazine cover it was for his wedding said everything there is to say about that little bollocks; he thought his scruff and him were gonna be the next "Posh and Becks".

'Wasn't unreasonable'....come on we are talking about the crazy world of premiership football not the gas board..Cole could have got far more than he was asking from us elsewhere... the club new that..but they thought they were being clever because they thought they were in a no lose situation..they thought they could get away with paying him less than he was worth because he was a fan and worst case scenario if he didn't like it they had Clichy waiting in the wings..

Just imagine you were in a performance related job and you had been doing very well of late... far better than most around you doing the same job... but were on less money than them.. say £500 a week... the firm round the corner offers you £1000 a week for doing the same job in recognition of how good at your job you had become...so you go back to your boss and tell him what you have been offered and tell him you are happy at the firm and would accept £750 a week..your boss comes back and tells you i'll give you £650 a week in full knowledge that you are worth a £1000 a week and he is getting you cheap at £750 a week...would you be disappointed...f*cking right you would because your boss was taking the piss..
.So you leave and your firm brings in another guy not as good as you who has proved nothing at the firm and pays him £1000 a week..would you feel vindicated for leaving..too f*cking right you would.. fan or no fan..

Your looking at this from a fans view DB and what you think you would do in Coles situation.. you need to take the crazy numbers involved out of the equation and just look at it as a question of who was right and who was wrong... in reality whether you love the club you play for or not if they are trying to f*ck you over because they think they can get away with it..at some point you need to make a stand otherwise they will keep taking advantage of your loyalty to your detriment...why should the mercenaries get looked after better than you just because you happen to love the club you play for.. it should be working the other way around but with us it rarely does..

Of course I am looking at it (primarily) from a fan's viewpoint - that's what I am. That is why we are talking about who we hate and why we hate them! I hate him because he is a devious lying scumbag. Simple as.

I understand your viewpoint but cannot agree. Football is not like any other business. For a start, you simply cannot compare someone earning £50K - £100K a week with someone earning £500 a week. In my job I've had a 14% pay cut forced upon me. The senior management team justify this by saying they too have a 14% pay cut. Now it doesn't take a genius to figure out that 14% from less than a grand a week is going to have a whole different effect on quality of life than 14% from FIVE GRAND a week, does it?

It's not like any other business to you.. but for those who are playing at that level it's what they do for a living .. so it is like any other business..and like any other business if you are not happy were you are or/and you are being paid well below what you are worth and someone is prepared to offer you more or treat you better you are going to move on... As for the amounts involved.. it's all relative... disgusting but relative..I'm sure there is a guy in Ethiopia working a hundred hours a week for 20 quid or even some guy on the social here thinking.. whats DB complaining about his 14% wage cut for.. he's still earning shit loads.. and relative to him thats true.. but i'm sure you don't see it that way..And i'm also sure that if the firm round the corner offered you a 30% pay rise you'd be off in a shot.

I cannot condone Cole's betrayal because he felt undervalued in his job. Poor him. No one should look past the crazy numbers involved; the whole point IS the crazy numbers involved. How much does a person need to live comfortably? I raise this point because it shows Cole's hypocracy; he continually talked up his being a true Arsenal fan, yet his true motivation was money, not playing for the club he "supported and loved from childhood". As a fan I find his actions disgusting. To be in a "job" doing something you love doing, for the club you supposedly love and to be paid massive ammounts of money for the privelage??!! AND STILL IT'S NOT ENOUGH???!! And believe me £50k+ a week IS massive money; I'll wager not one person on this forum even KNOWS someone on that type of money...

I seem to remember years ago talk of Adams going to Man U.. and this was fuelled by a similar situation.. the club offering him way below what he felt he was worth.. and i'm sure had the club continued to seriously undervalue him he would have had no qualms in going to United..So this is not a new thing or something peculiar to Cole this is how top flight footballers think..when it comes down to it the same principles apply in top level football as thay do in everyday working life.. the figures may be higher but the principles are the same..
Lets take Gerrard and Carragher as an example two boys local to and fans of the club they play for and on the face of it as loyal as they come by top flight football standards.... do you think they would be still there if they weren't getting seriously looked after financially.. if the club were quibbling about paying them near what their value was...i think you know the answer to that and it's not yes...so if it takes money to keep those two loyal that should give you a picture of the mentality of the rest of them..regardless of what us fans think they should be thinking or feeling about earning shitloads of money and playing football for a living.. when it comes down to it the prime motivator is the same as anyone elses in any other job and that is to earn the best living they can..

But the crux of the issue (and from a pragmatic viewpoint) is that Cole touted himself to Kenyon in JANUARY 2005 - long before his contract was due to expire and long before he actually left for the Chavs - a meeting he made INSTEAD of a proposed meeting with Wenger and Dein. This was DURING his contract negotiations with Arsenal. Nothing had been confirmed yet, maybe he could have negotiated for more money, maybe not.

That for me is the first point of betrayal. BY COLE. For me, "who was right and who was wrong" is easy. Cole was wrong. As was proven by the inquiry. Read this article;

Cole text claim untrue, says Viera

Marcus Christenson
Saturday June 4, 2005
The Guardian

Ashley Cole was told by Patrick Vieira to demand £80,000 a week during contract negotiations with Arsenal, according to statements submitted by his agent to the Premier League inquiry into the Chelsea "tapping up" affair.
Last night Arsenal's captain, in a statement issued through the club, said: "I categorically deny sending any such text message. It simply is not true."

This added to the complexity of the picture revealed by the disciplinary commission's publication of its verdict on the meeting at the Royal Park Hotel on January 27.

The documentation also referred to the preceding "bad-tempered and acrimonious" meetings over Cole's future between his agent Jonathan Barnett and the Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein.
The three-man commission, led by the former law lord Sir Philip Otton, declared the discussions "a sophisticated game of bluff" and conveyed the difficulty it had in reconciling the parties' conflicting depositions.

The inquiry heard that during those negotiations Barnett showed Dein a text message on his mobile phone that he claimed to be from Vieira and that told Cole "not to accept less than £80k".

Though Otton cast a measure of doubt as to whether that message's true provenance was the Arsenal captain's own mobile phone, the evidence submitted to the inquiry by Cole's agent and Chelsea's chief executive Peter Kenyon paints a negative picture of what the England left-back thinks about his club.

Kenyon declared that Barnett had told him, in the presence of Cole, that Arsenal is "primarily run by the French boys" and that his relationship with his manager Arsène Wenger was "not good".

"[Cole said] he was concerned that his relationship with the manager was not good, that there was definitely a series of cliques and that the club was primarily run by the French boys," Kenyon reported of the meeting at the Royal Park Hotel.

"As to the relationship, to our surprise, he indicated he was not happy with it. He then seemed very unhappy about the way that contract negotiations had taken place, with the distinct impression that the manager didn't support it and that there had been some kind of back-tracking.

"[Cole intimated] that he thought they were getting somewhere and for some reason, which he did not go into, there had been a fairly major turnaround in the negotiations. That is what had led to him and Barnett reiterating on numerous occasions during the meeting that he would not be staying at Arsenal after the end of his contract."

At no point does the document mention a denial of these statements from Cole. Before January's meeting with Chelsea, Cole had told Dein in a telephone conversation of his upset at Arsenal's stance in his contract negotiations.

Even so, Dein was under the impression that he and Wenger, whom the document describes as having been "extremely anxious not to lose Cole," would meet the player on January 27 or 28. Instead, Cole met Chelsea.

Otton's verdict rejects Kenyon's explanation that he and Jose Mourinho had merely attended the meeting with Cole, Barnett and the agent Pini Zahavi to listen to Cole.

"We are satisfied," said Otton's document, "on the balance of probabilities, that Kenyon and Mourinho were sufficiently interested in the possibility of signing Cole that they did not make the journey merely to listen to Cole's grievances.

"We are driven to the conclusion we must reject the 'we only went along to listen' explanation and safely infer that there was an active discussion between all present on the basis that Cole was going to be up for sale in the near future.

"They (Kenyon and Mourinho) played an active role in discussion and explored the prospect of acquiring him (Cole). This amounted to an approach with 'a view to negotiating a contract'."

Cole's lawyers are set to submit on Monday morning an appeal against his £100,000 fine. Chelsea's appeal against their £300,000 fine will take longer to formulate. Mourinho, who was fined £200,000, will also contest the findings through his club.

However the commission's statements indicate its sentiments about the Chelsea manager's conduct in the affair: "[Mourinho] was at first reluctant, not because such a meeting might infringe Premier League rules but because the previous day had been his birthday and a match and he was looking forward to a day off at home with his wife and children. An opportunity to meet secretly Ashley Cole face to face was too much of a temptation."

Chelsea accept their culpability according to the rules as they stand but will appeal against the size of their fines on the grounds that they are no more guilty than Cole and should have received equal punishment. Cole will continue to contest his guilt on the grounds that the rule on illegal approaches constitutes a restraint of trade.

He is a judas. I cannot understand ANY Arsenal supporter justifying, defending or condoning his actions.

Football is all about passion, love of the game, love of club. To endear yourself to a club's fans by stating you are one of them, and then touting yourself to not only your club's rivals, but relatively local rivals for a few extra grand is unforgivable.

If he had waited out his contract and then said, "Look, I want to move on, find a new challenge" or "I want to earn more elsewhere, you are not offering enough" I would not have had a problem with him. At least it would be honest and done in the open at the appropriate time.

But he touted himself behind our club's back and behind all our backs (in fairness, having Cashley behind your back is the LAST place you want him!).

It should also be noted he was upset at there being "too many Frenchies at the club" (I paraphrase!). So on top of being a greedy, lying little toe rag, he is also a xenophobic little crunt too! Wonderful.

I'm aware of all the he said she said and the other side issues..but this whole thing essentially boiled down to the money issue..and much as i'd love to get outraged that anyone is not happy with 55k a week for doing a job most of us fans would do for peanuts...i have to look at it from the bigger picture and the bigger picture is a club that is forever looking for ways to save a few pennies even to the point of cutting it's nose off to spite it's face.. the Cole debacle is just a part of that whole mindset.

Cole was one of the few players we had that had proved he deserved to be taken care of properly.. he was a fighter a battler and a one club man..and the club tried to use that to their advantage to quibble over a few grand..instead of making sure he was rewarded and kept happy which is how you should treat your best and most loyal employees.. but we seem to reserve that kind of pampering for guys who don't really give a f*ck about the club or have proved nothing.. we are quite prepared to throw money at them to stay or come and this is where the true hypocrisy lies... the arrival of Gallas on a wage way above what Cole wanted not to mention the more recent capitulation to Ade's wage demands after half a good season for me shows the mentality of the club and the twisted logic that went into the clubs negotiations with Cole..i'm afraid the ''he's loyal we'll screw him out of a few grand'' mentality i find far more annoying than Coles ''poor me'' attitude which in hindsight was proved to be a correct assumption he was being taken for a mug.. Gallas's wages proved that and Cole was well within his rights to be pissed off at the clubs mentality not to mention the money...