Spoiler

Robbie Savage’s weird pre-match ritual REVEALED!

Savage – done a book

BONUS GAME: Can you name the man to the left of Savage – the one with what looks like a classic “bubble perm”? Let us know in the comments section.

Anyone who has ever played drunk football will attest to the fact that while you deeply want to play with the deft sparrow-like genius of Lionel Messi, chances are that you have more in type with the rampant midfield maniac, Robbie Savage.

And now, like a great big lightbulb going off in a cartoon professor’s mind, a few extracts from his forthcoming autobiography – out next week – have inadvertently explained the science behind this.

Savage, it seems, may still have been pissed from the night before.

As featured in The Mirror, an extract from Savage’s book reads thusly:

“I’d never liked alcohol, maybe because my dad used to make me drink a can of Guinness every night as a kid to try to build me up.

“The first time I went out with my wife Sarah, when I was at Crewe, I was shocked because she ordered white wine with the meal.

“But when I joined Leicester and Sarah moved down to join me we would go out with friends on a Thursday night and put away eight to 12 bottles of wine in a sitting.

“How on earth I used to train the next day was beyond me but I would be fresh as a daisy and on Saturday I was man of the match.

“I didn’t even enjoy drinking that much – when it got to my third bottle I was gagging. But it became a superstitious thing. So on away trips I would sneak a bottle of white wine into my bag. First I’d just have a glass the night before the game, then half a bottle, then a a bottle. And I won player of the year.

“If my room-mate Graham Fenton was around I would just tell him I needed it to get to sleep. He probably thought it was OK because I was only drinking out of glass, not chugging out of the bottle.”

And lo, the plot thins.

• Autobiography
• booze
• Robbie Savage