Fellow Eastern European emigre warns of ‘dark-skinned people’

Sergio Rebrov, who contributed little except for bad feeling in return for a pay packet at Tottenham, has been kind enough to offer advice to Roman Pavlyuchenko following his arrival in North London. Yet he didn’t dispense useful tips for avoiding traffic on the north circular or let him know that an umbrella might come in handy in Blighty - his comments had a much more discriminatory tinge:

‘I wouldn’t go for a walk on my own around White Hart Lane.

‘A lot of dark skinned people live there. So naturally the crime rate is higher than anywhere else.

‘It’s not nice to be a robbery victim. So I suggest that Roman doesn’t walk but drives around that area.’

Perhaps Rebrov thinks life is much more glamorous in his hometown of Horlivka, where the decline of the mining industry has made it more depressing than listening to a Coldplay album while thinking about how much cheaper petrol was five years ago. As if this wasn’t bad enough,