Adams hit rock bottom during his Arsenal career, but now he is in a much happier place

For a man who feared that he was about to die only two months ago, Tony Adams is looking remarkably well on it. Sipping green tea, wearing a sharp pinstripe suit, putting down a James Bond novel to talk about returning to management sooner rather than later, it is hard to imagine that Adams was so recently told by an Azerbaijani surgeon that he was lucky to be alive.

Still as lean as the day he finished playing, in 2002, Adams talks almost disbelievingly of the trauma, the emergency medical intervention on his heart and the extraordinary good fortune that means he can look forward to his 50th year, and his 20th sober.

“The god of my understanding wants me alive and wants me to