The breaking news with the yellow bar declared, “Peter Crouch has been spotted in a helicopter landing at a golf club near Stoke,” as I sat with a quarter-pounder on a target roundabout. Crouch recalls the transfer saga with a smile but describes the move’s handling as “nasty.” He recounted a similar situation with Daniel Levy, who informed him that they were bringing Adebayor in and didn’t want to keep them both.
Despite expressing his happiness at the club, he was eventually told that if he didn’t leave, he wouldn’t get a squad number for the next season, compelling him to depart. This occurred when he was 30, and the asking price for him and Wilson Palacios was £16m, seeming like a deliberate effort to make it difficult for him to stay.
