Extracted from Timeonline by Martin Samuel:
Nicolas Anelka
losing waiting game
Nicolas Anelka is waiting for a
big club. Nicolas Anelka is always waiting for a big club. He was
waiting for a big club when he was at Arsenal, he was waiting for a
big club when he was at Liverpool. He was probably waiting for a
big club when he was at Real Madrid.
I know all the players who are at Chelsea, Arsenal, Manchester
United and Barcelona, he says. I know I am at their level.
Except he is not; he is at Bolton Wanderers because, in the end, he
ran out of big clubs and only small ones would take him.
And Anelka is so completely in a class of his own in Sammy Lees
team that it seems only a matter of time before he adds to the £68
million or so that has been spent on him over the past decade, but
this time he is being made to wait. Each of the four elite Barclays
Premier League clubs had a need for a striker this summer and none
beat a path to Anelkas door.
It does not help that he had been around the block with two of them
already Arsenal, the club he left in poisonous circumstances in
1999, and Liverpool, where a loan move did not evolve into a
permanent transfer three years later. Chelsea could do with a foil
to take the weight from Didier Drogba and, Lord knows, United have
been crying out for a prolific goalscorer since Louis Saha went
lame. Anelka was mentioned, but at the Reebok Stadium he
remains.
He will be wealthy and his frequent-flyer miles are to be envied
but, really, what a waste. At 28, Anelka reviews his career and
seems mystified at the bad blood and rancour, but there have been
too many confrontations, too many sulks and ill-tempered exits for
it to be coincidence. His appearance record for France, just 41
caps, tells another fractious tale.
He must know something has gone wrong because his list of employers
displays a steady downward progression: Arsenal, Real Madrid, Paris
Saint-Germain and Liverpool at the start, more recently Manchester
City, Fenerbahçe and Bolton. Even his five Premier League goals
this season have not been enough to stem Boltons decline under
Lee. This is a player who should be defining key matches in the
Champions League or the title race; instead, Bolton have lost on
three of the occasions on which Anelka has scored, the limited
performances of his teammates rendering his talents
redundant.
He claims that managers such as Sam Allardyce and Arsène Wenger
have no problems with him, yet Allardyce moved on to bigger things
at Newcastle United and Anelka was left behind.
As for Wenger, there were suggestions in the summer that he wanted
to take Anelka back to Arsenal but his board, mindful of the bad
feeling when he left for Madrid, would have none of it. A case of
those Anelka met on the way up ensuring he remains on the way
down.
I would have scored twice as many goals in a bigger team, at a
bigger club, Anelka insists. Yet he was with bigger teams, he was
at bigger clubs. He blew them off and now they have done the same
to him. Anelka is too good for Bolton, but that is his problem; he
was always too good for everybody.
