Brede Hangeland names Emmanuel Adebayor in his extraordinary 'Lazy XI', claiming the striker would wolf down cakes in the gym
Wilfried Zaha (Palace)
Amazing physique, athletic, huge potential. Some Mondays, he’d come over to me and say: ‘I’m starting my programme now!’
He’d do five push-ups, sigh, then leave. He would have been incredible if he was serious.
Bobby Zamora (retired)
Strong but hated the gym. Whenever it was time for dead lifts, he’d start feeling his hamstring. Every single time we went to the gym.
Dimitar Berbatov (unattached)
If only he ran. Never seen a man get so many massages in my life. Whenever we were in the gym, Berbatov was getting a massage. I knew the guy who gave him the massages. Usually at the end of the season, the players would give all the physios a gift. But he’d massage Berbatov for hundreds of hours during the season and he would get nothing.
Emanuel Adebayor (unattached)
I was marking Adebayor in midfield. Suddenly he said: ’Ah, I’m hungry.’ I replied: ‘What?’ He said: ‘I can’t wait for the game to finish. I’m so hungry. Do you know a good restaurant in London?’ At Palace, when we had strength workouts, he would sit in the gym with a cup of coffee and a muffin. He was being paid by City, Tottenham and Palace at the same time, and he was sitting in the gym drinking coffee.