8. Andy Carroll vs Steven Taylor
Where to even begin? Carroll's rap sheet encompasses a drunken nightclub fracas in December 2009 for which he was fined £1,000 and an arrest for assaulting a lingerie model ex-girlfriend that led to him being conditionally bailed to live with Newcastle captain Kevin Nolan in October 2010. Lest we forget it was at Nolan's residence that the Geordie striker also had his chrome-plated Range Rover torched by vandals. I thought they cancelled Dream Team? Then there was the time Carroll flew off the handle and clobbered Taylor after discovering his Magpies team-mate had exchanged texts with another former partner. The end result? A broken jaw for Taylor - reducing the defender to consuming his daily meals through a straw - and a fractured hand for Carroll, both requiring surgery. Although that didn't prevent him from flaunting his bandaged meat hooks in front of photographers at a 50 Cent concert, of all places. Luckily for us Carroll's tendency to court attention from the boys in blue didn't compromise our promotion challenge in the 2009/10 season nor the progress made in the following campaign once we'd returned to the Premier League. Instead his felonious conduct only served to enlighten us to the corrupt moral code shared by club and, lamentably, that of Chris Hughton at the time. The prize of top-flight football, seemingly, superseding the ethics of implementing a proper punishment in that instance. As Louise Taylor succinctly wrote in the Guardian, it was "a thoroughly depressing victory for pragmatism over principles."
Jak Penny
Contributor
Content writer, blogger, occasional journalist and lifetime inhabitant of the post-LOST island of grief.
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