Adebayor, a model for Spurs youth
I see the papers are full of Emmanuel Adebayor wanting to train with the youth team at Tottenham and promoting it as if it is his idea, amazing how something is a choice when it's the only choice you have.
Tottenham have to treat him equally, employment law insists, so although he has the option to train with the first team, he has known he will never play, never be given a squad number. If he called Spurs bluff, he has just lost, now if he wants to play football at all he will have to drop his £5-million demand to leave.
Ideally Sours do not want him around the first team. He is a negative influence and when you are trying to build a winning mentality within a club, within a squad, within a team, negativity and non-believers are not what you want around.
You want players who have bought into what you are trying to do, you want positivity, laziness and I'll only play on my terms are not healthy traits and are not conducive to success. If you want to know why Tottenham haven't been successful then simply look at the attitude of Adebayor, even his country don't want him and they are not blessed with stars.
To be successful, you either have to pander to him and hope it will happen or devise a strategy and stick to it. Tottenham has decided to take the latter road at last and that means the door for the money mercenaries too interested in themselves than the club.
Only you determine what you get out of your life, nobody else makes that decision for you, you make your own choices, you are the one who determines how much effort you use, how much desire you have. If you want something bad enough then you find a way to get it or achieve it. A football player is no different, they are not supermen, they are just ordinary human beings with the same traits as you.
It is the football player themselves who determine how successful they will be as an individual, yet fans seem to want to blame someone else. Gareth Bale and Emmanuel Adebayor are two talented players, one is enjoying playing for the club he has always wanted to play for, has won a UEFA Champions League with them and the other is training with a bunch of kids not wanted by club or country.
Which mentality breeds success? Yes, that's right, mentality, not skill, not ability, mentality determines the player, a player will become what he mentally wants to be, he'll work at it until he does. Which mentality do you, therefore, fill your squad with?
Do you have players who moan and groan because they are not given special charitable status, players who have to have a run in the team or it's not somehow fair or do you fill it with guys so hungry to be successful that they perform when they are given a chance without a run in the side?
I know which type of player I want at the club, yet there are plenty of fans with the wrong mentality themselves supporting the wrong mentality in our players and looking for a scapegoat to blame. It is crucial to success that we do our homework on a players mentality and become world class at it, it isn't good enough to simply buy young talent, it has to be young talent with a genuine drive to succeed, not hollow words, hollow desire.
If we don't use every means possible to achieve that we are doing ourselves an injustice, we are tying our hands. Those responsible have to be brave to ensure we tread a path that sets us apart from the crowd and totally embraces mental evaluation.
Who is responsible for that? No, it isn't Daniel Levy and the board, it is Mauricio Pochettino. It is he who decides how a player is coached, mental training has to be a part of that and only he can determine the intensity and frequency of it. The idea may come from above, but he would have to be sold upon it, he would be the one making the decision.
The club can discuss it with him and make it policy for now and on an ongoing basis, but it can't be introduced without his consent. Equally it is Pochettino who has to say this is the type of mentality of player I want, he determines who we search for. Just as a player has to buy into what Pochettino is doing then Pochettino has to buy into assessing a players mentality before we buy them and agreeing a walk away policy when you come across red flags.
What is a red flag? I wrote about Paulinho and questioned his mentality when he told the media he was too lazy to learn English, the masses missed the significance of those words, that laziness in one area will mean laziness in other areas, not a trait we want in a Spurs player. That statement was a massive red flag, that is the attitude we need to find out before we buy, not after.
Sure enough we see he has gone to China for money, was always deciding he had an injury in training apparently and was often openly lazy in his performances on the field. He turned out to be a complete waste of money, but mentally assessing him properly beforehand could perhaps have avoided that. Surely that is the lesson to learn from that, not simply to say oh well never mind let's try another one, repeating the same mistake is criminal. I am not saying we are, it's too early to tell, but the success or lack of, of Stambouli and Fazio, do raise questions.
Talent is not the be all and end all, mental ability is, mental ability will get you the talent and ensure you use it in a way that is beneficial, not in a way that sees a player do the minimum required to draw his cheque each month.
Emmanuel Adebayor should be held up as an example to our youth as to how not to approach your career as a professional footballer, give me a Harry Kane type any day. What mentality do Son Heung-min and Clinton Njie have, I don't know, but it can't be any worse than Emmanuel Adebayor's and it almost certainly is going to be a whole lot better.
That is just as important to find out as how much skill they have, we'll see the first signs of that in their application after a settling in period, to start with they will be out to impress.
Further Tottenham Reading
Players ability doesn't determine the transfer fee
Spurs strikers ranked by goal threat
Will England for Kane and Rooney in the same team?
Tottenham have to treat him equally, employment law insists, so although he has the option to train with the first team, he has known he will never play, never be given a squad number. If he called Spurs bluff, he has just lost, now if he wants to play football at all he will have to drop his £5-million demand to leave.
Ideally Sours do not want him around the first team. He is a negative influence and when you are trying to build a winning mentality within a club, within a squad, within a team, negativity and non-believers are not what you want around.
You want players who have bought into what you are trying to do, you want positivity, laziness and I'll only play on my terms are not healthy traits and are not conducive to success. If you want to know why Tottenham haven't been successful then simply look at the attitude of Adebayor, even his country don't want him and they are not blessed with stars.
To be successful, you either have to pander to him and hope it will happen or devise a strategy and stick to it. Tottenham has decided to take the latter road at last and that means the door for the money mercenaries too interested in themselves than the club.
Only you determine what you get out of your life, nobody else makes that decision for you, you make your own choices, you are the one who determines how much effort you use, how much desire you have. If you want something bad enough then you find a way to get it or achieve it. A football player is no different, they are not supermen, they are just ordinary human beings with the same traits as you.
It is the football player themselves who determine how successful they will be as an individual, yet fans seem to want to blame someone else. Gareth Bale and Emmanuel Adebayor are two talented players, one is enjoying playing for the club he has always wanted to play for, has won a UEFA Champions League with them and the other is training with a bunch of kids not wanted by club or country.
Which mentality breeds success? Yes, that's right, mentality, not skill, not ability, mentality determines the player, a player will become what he mentally wants to be, he'll work at it until he does. Which mentality do you, therefore, fill your squad with?
Do you have players who moan and groan because they are not given special charitable status, players who have to have a run in the team or it's not somehow fair or do you fill it with guys so hungry to be successful that they perform when they are given a chance without a run in the side?
I know which type of player I want at the club, yet there are plenty of fans with the wrong mentality themselves supporting the wrong mentality in our players and looking for a scapegoat to blame. It is crucial to success that we do our homework on a players mentality and become world class at it, it isn't good enough to simply buy young talent, it has to be young talent with a genuine drive to succeed, not hollow words, hollow desire.
If we don't use every means possible to achieve that we are doing ourselves an injustice, we are tying our hands. Those responsible have to be brave to ensure we tread a path that sets us apart from the crowd and totally embraces mental evaluation.
Who is responsible for that? No, it isn't Daniel Levy and the board, it is Mauricio Pochettino. It is he who decides how a player is coached, mental training has to be a part of that and only he can determine the intensity and frequency of it. The idea may come from above, but he would have to be sold upon it, he would be the one making the decision.
The club can discuss it with him and make it policy for now and on an ongoing basis, but it can't be introduced without his consent. Equally it is Pochettino who has to say this is the type of mentality of player I want, he determines who we search for. Just as a player has to buy into what Pochettino is doing then Pochettino has to buy into assessing a players mentality before we buy them and agreeing a walk away policy when you come across red flags.
What is a red flag? I wrote about Paulinho and questioned his mentality when he told the media he was too lazy to learn English, the masses missed the significance of those words, that laziness in one area will mean laziness in other areas, not a trait we want in a Spurs player. That statement was a massive red flag, that is the attitude we need to find out before we buy, not after.
Sure enough we see he has gone to China for money, was always deciding he had an injury in training apparently and was often openly lazy in his performances on the field. He turned out to be a complete waste of money, but mentally assessing him properly beforehand could perhaps have avoided that. Surely that is the lesson to learn from that, not simply to say oh well never mind let's try another one, repeating the same mistake is criminal. I am not saying we are, it's too early to tell, but the success or lack of, of Stambouli and Fazio, do raise questions.
Talent is not the be all and end all, mental ability is, mental ability will get you the talent and ensure you use it in a way that is beneficial, not in a way that sees a player do the minimum required to draw his cheque each month.
Emmanuel Adebayor should be held up as an example to our youth as to how not to approach your career as a professional footballer, give me a Harry Kane type any day. What mentality do Son Heung-min and Clinton Njie have, I don't know, but it can't be any worse than Emmanuel Adebayor's and it almost certainly is going to be a whole lot better.
That is just as important to find out as how much skill they have, we'll see the first signs of that in their application after a settling in period, to start with they will be out to impress.
Further Tottenham Reading
Players ability doesn't determine the transfer fee
Spurs strikers ranked by goal threat
Will England for Kane and Rooney in the same team?
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