Anelka: Back at Highbury (CliveBrunskill/Allsport)

Anelka ruined Arsenal's summer in 1999 by saying he would leave north London to realise his boyhood dream of playing for Real Madrid. Arsenal responded by saying he would be made to honour his contract and that, if they did sell him, it would not be to Real Madrid.

The French striker did not honour his contract and he did go to Real for £23m, which, at the time, made him the most expensive French player in history.

The fans at Arsenal sought solace in song. 'Chim chiminey, chim chiminey, chim chim cheroo. Who needs Anelka when we've got Kanu?' they chorused and it is safe to assume there will be some tuneful abuse on Sunday rather than a pre-match presentation to mark the services rendered to Arsenal by the 22-year-old French striker.

Anelka, back in England after falling out first with Real and then with Paris St Germain, does not care at all about how he is perceived at Highbury.

'I do not regret anything I have done,' Anelka once told me. 'When it is convenient for clubs they forget the contracts. I was at Arsenal with Paul Merson. He was under contract, he did not want to leave and yet it suited the club to sell him. So he went.

'It was the same with Steve McManaman. We were together at Real Madrid. He signed a five-year contract but Real wanted to sell him after one year. He never asked to leave and made it clear he wanted to stay. The clubs treat the players as they want and all I have done is do what is right for me.'

Those remarks were not made this week, because Liverpool have banned Anelka interviews. They do not want the controversy which his forthright views would cause.

Anelka has never enjoyed the most cordial of relationships with the media, no matter where he has played, and the story of how I was eventually permitted to talk to him just before England played France in Paris in September 2000 tells you something about his life. It was like something from a spy novel.

Mobile phone calls to his brother Didier were exchanged and eventually I was told to wait in my hotel room for details of the rendezvous.

Eventually, a trusted Anelka confidant named Doug rang with the briefest of messages revealing time and address where the interview would take place. It was to be at Anelka's parents' house in Elancourt, some 20 miles from Paris.

It was the Anelka brothers, Didier and Claude, who were said to wield the most influence, and Arsenal did not regard it as a benevolent influence.

Anelka has always said they have never made him do anything he didn't want to do or go somewhere that he didn't want to go.

And if he employs them to work on his behalf, is that any different from the recent revelation by Liverpool's Steven Gerrard that he has told his brother to give up his job and pays him to stay at home because it would not be right to be wealthy while a close family member is not?

When I interviewed Anelka, it was clear to me that he is by nature a shy person and was never totally comfortable when speaking English. That is why he had not given interviews in front of a mass audience in England.

He opted to keep his counsel and that made him an immediate target, but remember that when he joined Arsenal he was 17. How many teenage British footballers would be at ease moving to Paris and conducting press conferences in French?

As for his football, it is interesting to hear the observations of Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger, who paid £500,000 to bring Anelka from Paris St Germain five years ago.

'He was never a moment's trouble to me where training was concerned,' said Wenger. 'It is impossible to criticise his attitude where football was concerned.'

Phil Thompson, in charge of Liverpool while Gerard Houllier recuperates from illness, delivered an identical message last week.

One cannot pretend that managing Anelka is easy. He is on loan to Liverpool until the end of the season because he fell out with Luis Fernandez at PSG. But that was down to the manager asking him to play in midfield and it is fair to ponder whether Arsenal's Thierry Henry would happily accept a similar request.

Anelka's idiosyncrasies include a period when he decided to sign his autograph in Chinese and he once took a swing at a journalist in Paris when the man asked whether his mother had brought him up correctly.

Anelka said: 'You never speak about my mother,' demonstrating that, despite a laid-back appearance, like the rest of us, he has a breaking point.

Former team-mates at Arsenal, Real Madrid, Paris St Germain and indeed with France say he is mostly easy-going, however, but intensely private.

They also say he is one hell of a footballer. Perhaps that is why Arsenal supporters so resented his departure. They would not have minded losing a loser, but Anelka replaced Ian Wright and produced some scintillating form as Arsenal won the Double in 1998.