Emile Heskey – target-man for the wrong reasons

I have Heskey on the back of my England shirt as a nod to my favourite player in recent times for England. I wear the shirt for a team I play 5-a-side for and I have had people point and chortle. Once I had a woman come up to me smiling and ask why he was on my shirt as he was useless. I pointed out his stats alongside Owen and his goal scoring record outside of international games and she seemed crestfallen. Turns out her narative gleaned from the red tops doesn't stand up to reality. Perhaps the others who point and laugh are similarly misinformed and happy to be so as it means they can have a joke about the man who has made millions from playing football dispite a few mistakes. It eases the pain perhaps. It runs with Arsenal are fragile and their heads drop etc narrative over facts.

Bar one season, Heskey was absolutely brutal at Liverpool, limping his way from one heartless display to the next while hiding behind the "works hard for the team" myth that stopped bearing any resemblance to the truth long before.
He vanished at the merest sight of difficulty. Whatever it was, belief or balls, he was severely lacking it and his talent - of which there shouldn't have been any doubt - was never fulfilled.

Heskey made his debut for the Newcastle Jets last Sunday as they went down 2-0 to an Adelaide United team which had just travelled from Tashkent, only arriving a day before the game. He didn't make much impact, his only real contribution being a late hit on United goalkeer Eugene Galekovic which earned him the wrath of the Adelaide players. Hopefully once he's got some match fitness he might start to show the 'silky skills' that enticed Newcastle to sign him.