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.

The best spot kick showboating ever seen

Knocking a dead ball into the goal from twelve yards should be the easiest thing in the world for a professional footballer, but as Jenas, Chimbonda, Yakubu and Jagielka learned last night, it’s tough under pressure. Maybe they should have tried to emulate one of these classic efforts:

Johan Cruijff gets some help

Francesco Totti backheels it

Gonzalo Pineda pulls off a cheeky chip

(more after the jump)