Just what we need - another opinion on Rafa

Remember Jermaine Pennant? We here at thespoiler certainly do, mainly for classily proposing to his girlfriend in a graveyard. On the off chance you care, Jermaine now strolls around the touchline for Real Zaragoza in the lower echelons of la Liga.

Pennant turns 27 in January, and it may be fair to say that he hasn’t quite fulfilled the potential of his teenage years, when aged just 15, that fine dissector of young talent Arsene Wenger, splashed out £2m on the Notts County lad. But whose fault? Being a footballer, the answer is inevitably, not his own. These are his thoughts on Rafa:

“Liverpool have had some great strikers come and go - Robbie Keane is scoring goals at Tottenham, Peter Crouch is scoring now. It didn’t happen at Liverpool: it must be about how the manager relates to players, how the tactics are and how he restricts players. The coach plays a big part when you arrive at a new team. If he restricts you, it’s going to make you play differently.

When I was there, sometimes I would like to get the ball and not even beat the man, just put it straight in. And he would be shouting: ‘Go to the byline.’ He’d say it before the game and, if I had put a ball in early, as I was jogging back he’d be there gesturing for me to get to the byline. You think, ‘Give it a rest. Can I just play like this? Can’t I just express myself?’”

With his PR team suddenly awake and jolted upright, Pennant later clarified:

“I have no qualms or bad feelings about Rafa and I still love the club. He’s a great manager and there are times when he is a genius but sometimes his approach can take the best out of you.

The quotes seem fairly typical of a footballer with an axe to grind, exploiting the current sports news agenda. Let’s just hope for his fellow travellers, that Pennant isn’t at the wheel of this particular bandwagon.

Is this Hollyoaks beauty an official Pompey supporting lady?

Portsmouth’s David James caused a WAG-based kerfuffle in 2003 when he left his wife Tanya for a lady named Amanda Salmon. Jamo’s home life looks to be in a tempestuous condition once again - Amanda has moved out of James’ house and our friends at Kickette have alerted us to the fact that the former England keeper has been spotted out and about with Hollyoaks star Claire Cooper.

Scorned beauty can’t seem to part with ill-fated jewellery

Poor old Amii Grove. Not only did her heart-warming fairytale romance with ‘Kop Love Rat’ Jermaine Pennant come to an end on New Years Eve (read all about the graveyard proposals and CCTV infidelities here), but her attempts to cash in on her devastation were thwarted by an eBay saboteur. The Brummie beauty attempted to sell the £38k engagement ring given to her by Pennant on the auction site, but things didn’t quite work out.

Undeterred by this ominous dose of karma, Amii re-listed the ill-fated piece of jewellery here, but as you can see, it failed to reach its reserve.

As the old saying goes, however, you can’t keep a good topless model down. Amii has now relisted the ring for a third time, with a lower reserve price, but it has yet to attract any bids.

Jermaine, if your reading this, do us all a favour and put a bid on the ring. Not only will it put your former lover out of her online auction-based misery, but you’ll have something familiar to give to current plaything Jennifer Metcalfe. Who knows, maybe she could put it on eBay one day too…

Spoiler bonus: More of Amii here

Scorned beauty cashes in on relationship with Jermaine Pennant

For the past few years, the romance between Page Three girl Amii Grove and Jermaine Pennant has been a little ‘tumultuous’. The blonde beauty dumped the ‘Kop Love rat’ in 2007 after she caught him doing it with another lady on his own CCTV security system, but took him back late last year when he proposed to her in a graveyard.

The engagement, however, ended recently and Pennant has fled back to his former love, Hollyoaks star Jennifer Metcalfe. In order to cast aside the painful memories, she has decided to sell her £38k diamond engagement ring on eBay.

The 2.05 carat ring, which has received bids of £20,502 at the time of writing, appears to have been posted by Amii on her personal eBay account. Unfortunately,

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You couldn’t make up this kind of sexy adventure

In 2007, Amii Grove enjoyed a lengthy relationship with Jermaine Pennant - she even moved into his home to provide brief distractions during the moments when the footballer wasn’t training, in a nightclub or playing Xbox. Things turned sour, however, when she caught the Liverpool winger cheating on her via the CCTV cameras in his mansion. Amii promptly caused £200,000 worth of damage and profited by selling her story to any newspaper that would listen.

Since then, the “Kop love rat” has been at it with foxy Hollyoaks star Jennifer Metcalfe, but the tragic death of Amii’s brother has brought the pair closer together again. Jermaine recently brought flowers and a card to pay his respects at his burial site, and discovered that the best way to get a lady to forgive a man for cheating is to catch them at their weakest possible moment, and propose in the least appropriate setting:

“We went to visit Lee’s grave and I was kneeling down laying some flowers when Jermaine bent down next to me and asked, ‘Do you want to get married to me?’.

“It’s been a tough year for the family. Getting engaged to Jermaine is probably a bit of good news that we needed. Lee would have been so happy for us. I never stopped thinking about Jermaine after we split up - and he feels the same way.”

It honestly sounds like the plot of a bad daytime soap opera, so don’t be surprised to hear that it was actually Jermaine Pennant’s evil twin who proposed, or that Amii is actually a robot from the future or something.

[Kickette]

The Spoiler counts down the best supporting ladies of the year

Can you make time for fifty of the world’s greatest WAGs? You’re already reading blogs at work, so why not further hamper your productivity by checking out what (who) footballers do in their time?

Click the link below to get started…

Click here to see the fifty hottest WAGs of 2008

Whisper hello to some handsome ladies…

Days in The Spoiler office can be long and draining. There is no natural light, only basic rations to eat, and some days we’re forced at gunpoint to compile lists of the best looking women we will probably never meet. Here’s fifty of them.

It’s a pleasure.