You have to have a pretty special brain to pick a fight with John Carver. The Geordie coach has a notoriously volatile temperament - as Newcastle fans found out at Southampton recently - and he's hardly the kind of man you'd mess with at the best of times. Clearly nobody told Craig Bellamy, who clashed with Bobby Robson's number two ahead of Newcastle's 2004 UEFA Cup match against Mallorca, after Bellamy wound Carver up, as the striker admitted:
I arrived at the training ground and he wasnt there. Hes a coach. He should have been in before me so I parked in his space. I knew it would wind him up. I walked past him later that morning and said hiya, all proud of myself because of my little stunt, and he just walked straight past me without saying a word. It made me smile. I thought job done. My problem sometimes is that I dont know when to stop. So I kept winding him up. I wouldnt let it go. So by the time we got to Newcastle Airport to get the flight to Majorca, he was at snapping point and we had a confrontation. I was talking to someone else and I mentioned JC loudly enough to make sure he heard me poking fun at him"
Inevitably, Carver snapped, and the pair almost came to blows, though reports that Bellamy threw a chair at Carver are off the mark.
