Vince Grella is the latest victim of aggressive burglary

In light of the antics of the Liverpool FC cat burglar, the ram-raid attack on Jermaine Pennant’s mansion and the assault on Darren Fletcher’s home, the prospect of being a rich Premiership footballer living in Cheshire, Manchester or Merseyside is becoming less attractive.

Blackburn’s Vince Grella is the latest victim of a burglarisation in the north-west, thanks to a knife-wielding gang who made off with his jewellery and gaz guzzling car.

Incredibly, the Aussie midfielder has become the seventeenth Premier League armed robbery victim in less than three years. The Sun reports:

Four masked thugs burst through the door of his £1million house, threatened him with a blade and demanded jewellery and watches.Stunned Grella, 29, then saw the mob swipe his car keys and speed away in his BMW 4×4.

Footballer’s mansion raided despite living nowhere near Liverpool

At around 9pm last night, Darren Fletcher’s gigantic house in Bowdon, Greater Manchester was burglarised by a gang of naughty thieves.

The intruders threatened a women at the house - who may or may not have been Fletcher’s girlfriend Helen Grice - but had left by the time police arrived. It is currently unknown what, if anything, was stolen, or if weapons were used during the incident. The robbers struck just a few hours after Fletcher headed out to Italy to prepare for tonight’s Champions League bout with Internazionale.

The midfielder of course isn’t the first Premier League star to suffer a home invasion while playing away - Steven Gerrard, Dirk Kuyt, Pepe Reina, Jerzy Dudek, Daniel Agger, Lucas Leiva and Peter Crouch have all suffered a similar fate while playing with Liverpool. Shola Ameobi also called police when to report several items missing from his bedraggled home, but realised he was just a messy bastard.

[The Telegraph]

Newcastle star mistakenly believed his pigsty home was burgled

Fearing he had become the latest Premier League burglary victim, Shola Ameobi recently phoned the police to report a break in. The concerned Newcastle striker told Northumbria Police that several items including his chequebook had been purloined from his £500,000 mansion. However, shortly after making the call, he realised that he hadn’t been burgled at all - his house was just really messy:

Police called the incident a ‘genuine misunderstanding’ and a source told the Daily Mirror: ‘We were told thieves had taken a number of things, the most important one being the chequebook.

‘Given what soccer stars earn, that was obviously a matter of great concern. Then we got a call back saying nothing was missing after all.

‘Perhaps he had had a party and the place just looked as if it had been burgled.’

It must have been an incredible party if Ameobi has absolutely no recollection of staging it…

Newcastle bonus: Ameobi isn’t the only Magpie to brush with the law. Oba Martins has been in court after being caught doing 106mph. Amazingly, he kept his licence. Actually, he’s a famous footballer, so it’s not that amazing.

The Liverpool FC crime spree continues

Just a few weeks after young Brazilian Lucas Leiva had his home ransacked, Jermaine Pennant became the ninth Liverpool player to suffer at the hands of thieves in the past two years.

Ram-raiders, apparently hell-bent on relieving the winger of some of his flash cars, smashed a stolen Land Rover into the gates of his £3m Cheshire mansion in the middle of the night.

The thieves got away without a single purloined automobile, but the incident clearly shocked Pennant so much that he ended up posing for photos still wearing his jammies.

Pennant’s Page Three girl fiancée Amii Grove (who once caught him at it with another lady on CCTV cameras in their home) has commended

Brazilian’s possessions purloined while on Champions League duty

Last December, Alex Curran had a terrifying encounter with armed robbers who broke into her home while her husband was diving playing away in Marseille, marking the sixth occasion in eighteen months that a Liverpool star’s home security had been breached. The Spoiler’s crack team of sleuths predicted that John Arne Riise would be the next man in a red shirt to suffer a break in (his rogue payslip, bankruptcy and apparent willingness to part with his Champions League medal to show casual attitude to materialism), yet he managed to escape to Rome unburglarised.

In place of the ginger Norwegian, young Brazilian Lucas Leiva has had his home ransacked, with thieves making off with an Olympic bronze medal, some Brazil shirts and a huge “swag” bag full of “treasured memories”.

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