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.