Bendtner names Adebayor as the only Arsenal team-mate he truly could not stand

Nicklas Bendtner has named Emmanuel Adebayor as the only team-mate he genuinely disliked during his nine years at Arsenal, recalling a fractious relationship that began the moment the two strikers first met and eventually erupted on the pitch during a humiliating 5-1 League Cup semi-final defeat to Tottenham Hotspur.

Speaking to talkSPORT in 2021, Bendtner was candid about the dynamic: “There is only one guy I’ve fallen out with and that’s Adebayor. We never liked each other. Apart from that I got on with most people.”

The pair shared a dressing room at the Emirates after Adebayor arrived from Monaco, becoming two of Arsène Wenger’s striking options for the 2007/08 season. Despite sitting next to each other in the changing room, the chemistry was absent from the outset. “He was 25, I was 26, from the first moment we saw each other it was just a bad vibe,” Bendtner said. “That never changed.”

The tension reached its most visible point during the League Cup semi-final loss to Spurs, a result that sent Tottenham through to lift the trophy. With Arsenal being dismantled 5-1, frustration between the two forwards spilled over into a confrontation on the pitch and continued into the dressing room afterwards.

“We had some small bust-ups in the changing room and that quite big one at Tottenham where it sort of blew out of proportion,” Bendtner recalled. “We got hammered 5-1, we were so bad and the disappointment of letting the fans and team down just got out of hand between us.”

The fallout led to both players being summoned to Wenger’s office the following day and fined. Bendtner acknowledged that the episode, uncomfortable as it was, carried a lesson: “It was actually quite a good way of learning how to work with someone that you really disliked.”

Adebayor enjoyed a prolific 2007/08 campaign, scoring 30 goals in all competitions, but left for Manchester City in 2009 — a transfer that produced one of the Premier League era’s most notorious goal celebrations when he ran the length of the pitch to salute the away end after scoring against his former club. He later compounded the affront by joining Spurs.

Bendtner, meanwhile, went on to make 171 appearances for Arsenal, scoring 47 goals, before departing for Wolfsburg on a free transfer in 2014. The Danish striker subsequently had spells in Italy, Germany and Norway before retiring with Copenhagen.