Posted July 4, 200915 yr Nicolas Anelka Written by Loz and last updated September 2010 Nicolas Sebastien Anelka, known to the world as “Le Sulk†– well he is our “Sulk†now so we better get used to it!! On January 11th, 2008 Chelsea, quite remarkably became his ninth club in twelve years. Under just about any other circumstance that is not a transfer that would be widely welcomed however with Didier Drogba and Salomon Kalou away on ACN duties (and Drogba seemingly leaving at the end of the season), Shevchenko still struggling to find anything like his best form (and injured) and Pizarro clearly not good enough Chelsea needed a striker who had proved he could score in the Premiership. If there is one thing Anelka has done consistently, other than strop, it is scoring in England – maybe not on the scale that some think he will for us but reasonably regularly nevertheless. Let us go on a journey beyond rationality and reason, let us look at Anelka’s career! He was born on March 14th, 1979 in Versailles (which if we are simply looking for a reason for his history of strops then Bluebeard would have us stop right there!) to parents who had recently emigrated from the Caribbean based (but French in nationality) island of Martinique. His career began with Paris Saint-Germain who he played for between 1995 and 1997, making his debut in 1996 at the age of 16, and made 10 first team appearances in that period. Arsenal had recently appointed a relatively unknown manager (at least unknown in England) called Professor Yaffle and in February 1997 he signed Anelka at the age of 17 for what turned out to be the bargain sum of £500,000. In only his second season at the club (the 1997/98) season he played a substantial part in Arsenal’s league and cup double triumph. His pace and cool headedness in front of goal complemented Dennis Bergkamp's intelligence perfectly and although the stats show he only scored six league goals in 26 appearances and three FA Cup goals (one of which was in the final), you have to bear in mind he was still only 19 years old and ten of those appearances were as a sub or deputising for Arsenal favourite, later to be dreadful TV pundit Ian Wright (adopted father of SWP). The following season the goal tally increased as he became more of a regular and he contributed seventeen in the league and was named as the PFA Young Player of the Year. He also made his international debut for France against Sweden on April 2nd, 1998. Anelka reached for his CD collection, put on ‘With the Beatles’ and heard: The best things in life are free But you can tell me 'bout the birds and bees. Now gimme money THAT'S WHAT I WANT That's what I want THAT'S WHAT I WANT That's what I want, ye-ye-yeh, That's what I want. And when he arrived at Highbury the next morning he just couldn’t stop singing that song. Wenger said ‘Non’ , Anelka said ‘bah’ (or at least his brother/agent did) and Real Madrid said ‘Oui merci’ and two and a half years after arriving for £0.5m he was sold on for the quite remarkable amount of £22m. This was the summer of 1999 when £22m was a lot of money, it wouldn’t buy you an ageing Ukrainian now! At Real he was, by most accounts, nothing but a royal pain in the posterior. He was accused of not making any effort in training and made public accusations that his team mates were refusing to pass the ball to him. However he did pick up a Champions League medal when Real beat Valencia 3-0 in the May 2000 final with Anelka contributing two of Real’s goals in their 3-2 semi final aggregate win over Bayern Munich. However this was not enough to persuade Real Madrid he was worth the effort and they were soon looking to offload him. If you’re going to be a stroppy Frenchman then what better place to be one then in France, and more particularly Paris. £20m of PSG’s hard earned cash brought Anelka back to the club where it had all began In fact £20m didn’t buy you too much back then either. To be exact it bought 10 goals in 39 league matches and a further eight in sixteen European games, spread over the 00/01 and 01/02 season. By the time those seasons were over it was very much a case of ‘as you were’ with the PSG board stating that their relationship with the player had completely collapsed. Anelka was part of the French squad that won Euro 2000 although despite starting five of their six games (the final being the one he was dropped for) he failed to score a goal in the tournament. Maybe fortunately for him he was not part of the disastrous French 2002 World Cup campaign, nor was he selected for their Euro 2004 campaign. The 2006 World Cup campaign also saw him left out in the cold and to add insult to injury, when Djibril Cisse pulled out of the squad with injury it was Sidney Govou and not Anelka who was called in as a last minute replacement. This snub led him to say: "If I'm not in the squad, then there must be a good reason for it. I don't know if the best players in France are in this team." After that the view was once again getting tiring for Anelka and his brother was hankering for another transfer fee commission. However this time there was no hefty transfer fee, rather a loan move to Liverpool to play under Gerrard Houllier who was busy setting a trend that future Liverpool managers would follow, that being failing to win the Premiership. An equaliser against Everton in front of the Kop got him on the right side of the inmates however despite the fact he was beginning to look like he was settling in at Liverpool Houllier decided not to make the deal a permanent one as he was more interested in signing El-Hadji Diouf (now that is comedy). After three consecutive seasons without really setting the world alight his value was dropping however if there is one man you can rely on to pay over the odds for a player (other than Kenyon) it is Kevin Keegan and he broke the Manchester City transfer record when he shelled out £12m to bring in Anelka to aid in their quest to maintain their Premiership status after just gaining promotion. This was to be the catalyst for a quite remarkable occurrence. Anelka was to stay at the same club for two and a half seasons! Sheer laziness if you ask me, he could have been into double figures on the club count if he had just pulled his finger out a little more. His goal return for City was to be the best of his career to date with 14 league goals in the 2002/03 followed by 17 in the 2003/04 season. The 2004/05 season started in similar fashion and by the time it was half way through Anelka had scored a further seven goals however he, once again, had his eyes firmly set on acquiring some more air miles and to further his career at what he considered to be a bigger club. This bigger club turned out to be Fenerbahce, who paid £7m for Anelka’s services. Fenerbahce were to be more successful than Manchester City in terms of providing Anelka with silverware as they won the Turkish domestic league in the 2004/05 season however they were to be less successful than City at hanging onto Anelka as he only lasted two seasons with them, scoring a total of 14 league goals in 39 games, before moving onto Bolton in August 2006 for £8m (I hope you’re keeping count). Anelka’s fourth debut in the Premiership was in September 2006 but he took the best part of two and a half months to hit the back of the net for Big Sam’s outfit however once he did the goals came reasonably regularly rather than in massive amounts. The 2006/07 season saw him score 11 in 35 appearances. In the first half of 2007 Anelka was already making noise about possibly moving on however he appeared to have put that behind him when he signed a new four year contract with Bolton in August 2007. However Bolton started the 2007/08 badly and Anelka’s eight goals in thirteen games couldn’t prevent them sliding to 14th spot in the league by January 2008, just three points above the drop zone. There had been rumours of Chelsea’s interest in Anelka for a number of weeks before the January transfer window opened and this speculation was proven to be accurate when Chelsea put in an initial bid on January 7th rumoured to be in the region of £11m. Bolton rejected it but four days later the transfer was announced with the fee not confirmed but considered to be somewhere between £13.5 and £15m. So what will Anelka bring to Chelsea. Undeniably pace, maybe not quite the same acceleration he has in his youth but still plenty of it. He also brings a lot of composure in front of goal. He has never been one to panic on a goal scoring opportunity and he is excellent at spotting the run to create space for a through ball, something a player of Ballack’s calibre should be able to exploit. What he won’t offer is the determination to battle for lost causes, if he has to challenge a centre half to win a header and he feels it is 60-40 in the centre half’s favour then don’t expect to see him put a challenge in for it. Furthermore he won't provide the back to the goal hold up play that Drogba does so some thought will need to be out into how to adapt to his strengths. So is he still ‘Le Sulk’ – well that remains to be seen however there are positive signs that he isn’t. Although only at Bolton for a typically short space of time he didn’t appear to be causing the sort of disruption he was once famous for and in addition to this there have been some changes in his personal life which may have impacted on his personality. For a start he has ditched his pain in the arse brother as his agent which can only be good news for us. Secondly he recently got married and finally he converted to Islam back in 2002 taking the Muslim name Abdul-Salam Bilal, this was a move which it has been reported has helped him cool his boots considerably. Anelka made his debut for Chelsea when he replaced Claudio Pizarro in the 58th minute of Chelsea's entirely standard 2-0 Premiership win over Tottenham on January 15th, 2008. In the 32 minutes he was on the park he showed bags of movement and an impressive awareness of his team mates despite never having played with them before. Only a fine save by Spurs keeper Cerny and the width of the post prevented him from marking his debut with a goal or even possibly a brace. His first goal in a Chelsea shirt was against Wigan in the 4th round of the FA Cup with his second coming a week later in a Premiership match against Portsmouth - that was the last time we would see Anelka score in the 2007/08 season. Like a most of the rest of the team Anelka had a very poor day at the office against Spurs in the Carling Cup final however in his defence he was quite ridiculously played out wide on the left hand side where he looked like a fish out of water. A fair argument in his favour, but not one that can be afforded to him in relation to his performance against Derby in the league a few weeks later. Asked to play as a lone striker he roamed out of position on a regular basis and rarely provided the target through the centre that was expected of him. Although we won 6-1 on the day he was a clear weak link in the side. For the rest of the season Anelka was, frankly, poor and I am only being that kind because I hear he has some hard mates. He did little to prove that he merited a place in a Championship chasing squad and reinforced claims that he only shines in average sides. In the 2008 Champions League final against Man Utd Anelka came off the bench in the 99th minute. The game finished 1-1 after extra time and Anelka is reported to have refused to be one of the initial five penalty takers on the grounds that he hadn't been on the park long enough (note that Belletti came on with about 20 seconds left on the clock and scored one of those initial five penalties). With Drogba already off the park having been sent off this left John Terry to take the fifth penalty, a penalty that would have seen us crowned Champions League winners for the first time in our history. Terry slipped in his run up and clipped the outside of the post. This took the shoot out into sudden death and finally Anelka sulked his way up to take one - to say it was a half hearted effort would be like saying Geezer is partial to a farmer's drink. He missed and we lost. Anelka took this form into Euro 2008 where it would be a broad stretch of the imagination to say he represented France. France were, as a team, atrocious and the two players who were head and shoulders above the rest in terms of being awful were our very own Anelka and Malouda. Along then came the 2008/09 season to show the world, as if they didn't already know, that my footballing judgement is as reliable as wearing a dock leaf on your knob as a form of contraception. A combination of injury and self inflicted suspension meant Didier Drogba spent large parts of the season kicking his heels with responsibility for bagging the goals falling to Anelka. He didn't let us down and finished the season as the Premiership's top goal scorer with a haul of 19. He also scored two hat-tricks, the first being against Sunderland in a 5-0 league win, and the second against Watford in the FA Cup away at Vicarage Road. He scored 25 goals in all competitions in the 2008/09 season and that tally may have been higher if it wasn't for the fact he was often played wide right rather than as an orthodox striker. The 2009/10 season saw the appointment of Carlo Ancelotti as Chelsea manager. Ancelotti favoured the diamond formation and the obvious choice as a striking partnership was Drogba and Anelka. This is how it panned out in the Community Shield which Chelsea won on penalties after a 2-2 result after 90 minutes. In the first half Anelka appeared to be drifting out of position too regularly however in the second half his performance, as well as that of the rest of the team, improved considerably and he was unlucky not to get on the score sheet on a couple of occasions. He maintained that form throughout the first half of the season and up until Didier Drogba went off on African Cup of Nations duty. Then a drought kicked in. After scoring against Burnley at the end of January, Anelka was not to score again until mid April when he scored the only goal to secure a win over Bolton at the Bridge. By now Ancelotti had seen the error of his ways and the diamond (not favoured by many Chelsea fans) was well and truly ditched in favour of the more recognised Chelsea 4-3-3 formation. This saw Drogba playing in the centre and supported by Malouda on the left and Anelka on the right. This reduced Anelka’s chances in front of goal but gave him an opportunity to demonstrate a side to his game which I personally didn’t expect him to excel at. He finished the season with 33 league appearances, 11 goals and filled his boots with league and cup winners medals. In June Chelsea rewarded him for his efforts with a one-year contract extension which keeps him at the club until the summer of 2012. Anelka was part of the French World Cup squad which went to South Africa in 2010 and I think it is safe to say he left an impression! The French team were, for choice of a finer phrase’ a bag o’ sh*te and much of the blame for this, as always, lies at the door of managerial cretin Raymond Domenech. Domenech tore a strip off Anelka for his positioning, or lack of, during a game (probably true – I have bitched about that myself over the years) and Anelka is reported to have replied “Va te faire enculer, sale fils de pute†which translates as "Go f**k yourself you son of a whore.†The French Football Federation demanded an apology. Anelka refused and was rapidly booted out of the squad. The rest is pure French comedy gold! The squad then went on strike (French, strike – never) and refused to train. France were knocked out at the first round group stages and Anelka was later banned for 18 games for his actions. Anelka was then reported to have been “dying with laughter" at the ban as he had already announced his retirement from international football (thus retiring with 69 caps and 14 goals). Anelka started the 2010/11 season on fire. He got braces against Wigan (league), MK Zilina (Champions League) and Newcastle (disappointing 4-3 Carling Cup defeat) as well as winning a penalty against Stoke and setting up Malouda for a goal against West Brom.
