In 2009, Tony Adams was a Premier League boss with Portsmouth. A year later, he’d moved out of the frying pan and into the Land of Fire.
That’s the nickname given to the oil-rich country of Azerbaijan, where the future foxtrot enthusiast surprisingly went in the summer of 2010 to continue his managerial career at Gabala.
Up to then, that career hadn’t exactly gone well. A year after the Arsenal icon’s playing days came to a close in 2002, he’d taken over as gaffer of third-tier Wycombe but failed to lift them off the foot of the table, ending the campaign a full 14 points from safety. Months later, he quit with the Chairboys 17th in League Two.
That didn’t stop him failing upwards to the Pompey job in October 2008, having been Harry Redknapp’s assistant prior to the manager’s departure to Spurs. Adams almost guided Portsmouth to a famous UEFA Cup win over Milan – 2-0 up at Fratton Park before Ronaldinho and Pippo Inzaghi levelled late on – but the south-coast club slid from seventh in the Premier League to the brink of the relegation zone, and he was dismissed within four months.
What next? Azerbaijan, of course. “It’s a magnificent project,” stated Adams when he joined ambitious Gabala, who’d just finished fifth in the country’s top flight. “To win the league in three years is achievable.”
Ex-Spurs defender Gary Stevens followed him as assistant, and 33-year-old former Derby and Jamaica striker Deon Burton (below) signed up too, but things weren’t straightforward. Based in a city of just 1
