It is not often that footballers annoy me. I like to think that I am a fairly placid guy regarding football and I usually treat the top flight players with the upmost respect. They are performing tricks on the pitch which I could never do in my wildest dreams, even when I was at school. Match of the Day does not annoy me either. It is too late on a Saturday evening for me to start ranting at the TV screen. My brain has been deep cleaned after the Strictly Come X Factor reality mush during the early evening. It is also difficult to get a true picture of the afternoon’s game in a three minute highlights package topped and tailed with a little bit of punditry.

Last Saturday night was slightly different. Although he was apologetic, and I now sense that there may be more than just a bit of ‘history’ between Emmanuel Adebayor and the Arsenal faithful, you can’t condone an utterly provocative goal celebration based on the fact that he was emotionally all at sea after scoring his Manchester City goal against his old team.

I am pleased to see that the FA is making ‘FA-like’ noises that they intend to investigate this matter. It seems evident since the start of the season football’s authorities seem to be experimenting with controversial retrospective action after games, so I see no reason why there should not be an investigation about Adebayor’s full pitch sprint to goad the Arsenal faithful at the City of Manchester Stadium. There is no difference between the severity of that incident and Eduardo’s ‘alleged’ dive in that infamous Champions League tie against Celtic. You cannot behave like Adebayor in that game whilst on a football pitch, or in any place of ‘work.’

I appreciate that us fans turn into ultra sensitive souls inside the football stadium. We bleat about those ‘nasty’ players offending us, with any slightest action that we deem to be provocative, whether it is the cupping ear, or a cheeky wave to the opposition, but Adebayor’s bizarrely manic dash was in a different league. It is not abnormal for players to suffer justifiable and non-justifiable banter when they return to their former clubs, but it is totally weird for a former player, in the relative comfort of his home stadium, to dish out some gestures to the smaller group of visiting fans and the away team, who should be more intimidated with the unfamiliar surroundings.

Usually, you would expect a generally common consensus about such a stupid action, but there are the usual apologists taking the context out of the situation. They merely suggest that Adebayor did nothing wrong when he sprinted along the pitch and fell to his knees. If only football could be talked about in such ‘rational’ terms. I am supposed to believe that the City striker just ‘happened’ to find himself in front of the visiting fans, who were obviously upset about the loss of that goal. This is talk about football which does not appreciate the highly strung context associated with most football matches.

I presume that if (and hopefully when) Adebayor is charged, there will be the fans who suggest that he is only being penalised, because there is a general vendetta against Manchester City Football Club and their million pound fortunes. Regardless whether you are cash strapped Mansfield Town struggling to survive in the non-league wilderness or mega-rich Manchester City, your players cannot behave like that on the football pitch.

From the three minutes of highlights, the second half of this game seemed to be especially exciting, but I will never know whether Emmanuel Adebayor had an “agenda” against Arsenal at 3pm on 12th September, which he intended to enact for the next ninety minutes. I appreciate that it is not unusual for a player to want to prove a point to the team that let him go during the summer, but was Adebayor taking the “let his feet do the talking” phrase to a new level when he jogged out on the pitch at two minutes to three? We will never know, but you still hang on to the hope that a fellow professional player would not set out to intentionally injure a fellow professional, and a former team-mate. I wonder whether I am being hopelessly optimistic in this crazy football Armageddon world that we live in.

I stress that Adebayor is banned for a series of games IF he is found guilty of any of the various suspicions that have arisen from this particular game. If an Arsenal player had done the same thing, I would be still calling for the same action. It is difficult to believe that a financial penalty will have much of an effect on today’s top flight Premiership footballer. You have to hope that a ban would teach a player that anything does not go on the pitch, regardless of whether you are playing a team where it now appears that you left on the same bad terms as the tired commuter after a bad rush hour on the Northern line.