North London proves a little bit too edgy for troubled footballers…

People who survive North London are cut from a different cloth to the average gent. That’s probably why Hleb can’t take it, but the likes of Lehmann, Bergkamp and Amy Winehouse can. They’re just a little bit edgier, and don’t seem to mind that one minute the pavements will be littered with drugs paraphernalia, and the next you’ll be diving out of the way of a speeding Range Rover on a gorgeous cobbled street. It is, in short, testing.

Hence, you’d be hard pushed to find an area in the world that football players seem so eager to escape from - and that includes Wigan.

It’s like Kramer vs Kramer all over again… in a way

People of north London, lock your doors, put bars on your windows, and head upstairs to hide under a dressing table - it’s all kicking off in the transfer market. And yet again, London-bound players are being ordered to chose between Spurs and Arsenal.

Arsene Wenger has been granted full access to the club purse over the summer, and this week he should be putting a ribbon on a gorgeous £11 million deal for Marseille’s Samir Nasri. But then the trouble begins