Posts Tagged ‘Affray’

Benítez pleased Gerrard can ‘focus on football’ again

• Liverpool captain had been unable to go on east Asia tour
• ‘He can now concentrate just on football,’ says manager

Steven Gerrard last night celebrated being cleared of affray by scoring for a Liverpool XI in a 2–2 draw with Tranmere Rovers. His scoring return, hours after leaving court, will have pleased Rafael Benítez who, ahead of tomorrow’s friendly with Singapore, said the verdict would allow his captain to “focus on football”.

Benítez has had to deal with a run of injury problems and transfer speculation about senior players during Liverpool’s pre-season tour of Asia and the manager will be relieved that his captain put the incident behind him at Prenton Park against a Rovers side managed by two former Anfield stalwarts John Barnes and Jason McAteer.

Gerrard was unable to travel with his team-mates because of his week-long trial at Liverpool crown court. But, speaking before the 29-year-old’s scoring return, Benítez said he hoped Gerrard would rediscover the form that saw him score 24 goals last season.

“We are really pleased,” he said. “He is very important for us and he can now focus just on football. We are all pleased at the club and over here at the training camp. We have been supporting him all the time and were just waiting for the decision. Now he can concentrate just on football and hopefully play at the same level as last year.”

Benítez confirmed that Xabi Alonso, a target of Real Madrid, was fit following an ankle injury and ready to play against Singapore. Benítez, who also has Yossi Benayoun back from an ankle problem, said: “I am very happy to have Yossi and Xabi back. They are working very hard, the tempo of the session was fantastic and the fans really enjoyed it.

“We are trying to step up our training every day, especially for the international players. Today we had three teams playing against each other. It was good competition and pleasing for me to see.” The new signing Glen Johnson may miss out on tomorrow’s game as he recovers from an achilles injury. “We are being careful with Glen, we do not want to do any further damage,” added Benítez.

Jury clears Gerrard of affray

• Liverpool star ‘unwise’ to get involved, judge says
• Fans gather outside court to cheer ‘Stevie G’ verdict

It took a jury less than 90 minutes today to clear Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard of affray even though he admitted punching a man three times in a bar.

Gerrard maintained that he had acted in self-defence during the brawl at the Lounge Inn in Southport last December, which was triggered by a row over control of music.

Gerrard, 29, had wanted to pick the music in the bar, but Marcus McGee, who was in charge of the CD player, refused his request. The trial was told that although McGee, 34, did not throw any punches, the player believed he was about to be hit.

Earlier in the evening, the England international and his friends had seemed to be in high spirits, singing and dancing as they celebrated a crushing victory over Newcastle United.

Minutes after he had been rebuffed by McGee, the footballer approached him as he sat on a barstool. John Doran, Gerrard’s friend, elbowed McGee in the face, making him reel backwards and forwards. Fearing that he was about to be attacked, Gerrard landed three uppercuts on his face.

During the trial, he apologised for what had happened. Around 100 supporters gathered outside court today and cheered as Gerrard left the building.

Gerrard said: “I would like to put this case behind me now and I am really looking forward to the season ahead and concentrating on football now.”

Judge Henry Globe, recorder of Liverpool, told Liverpool crown court after the verdict that the football player “could walk away with his reputation intact”.

The judge told Gerrard that in hindsight it “may have been unwise of you” to approach Marcus McGee following the trivial disagreement.

“However, that is far from saying you were criminally responsible for the violence that thereafter erupted.”

The judge said when the violence commenced the victim and his partner Gina Lond, who was standing nearby, thought that Gerrard had started it. Gerrard himself had initially thought McGee was the first person to deliver a blow.

“The CCTV evidence obtained later demonstrated conclusively that you were all mistaken,” the judge noted. The judge said the verdict was credible and the jury had demonstrably paid close attention to the full facts of the case.

Six of Gerrard’s friends, two of whom are Accrington Stanley players, will be sentenced next month after pleading guilty to charges of affray or threatening behaviour in connection with the brawl.

Having twice rejected the lure of Chelsea’s riches, “Stevie G”, as he is universally known to the red half of Liverpool, epitomises the one-club player, the local boy made good who has tried to maintain his links to the Bluebell estate in Huyton, where he grew up.

During the trial he appeared to well up as a statement from Kenny Dalglish was read out in court. “He is a very humble man,” the former Liverpool star said, who was “not the archetypal footballer” and had “never forgotten his roots”.

But the England midfielder’s evident puzzlement, then anger, at the man who, in the words of the prosecution, dared to “say no” to Steven Gerrard betrayed the fact he could never be one of the lads.

Jon Holmes, the veteran football agent whose clients have included David Beckham, said: “Their relationship with their community and the world they’re from has changed enormously. The irony is that Gerrard is probably better connected to his community than others.”

Former Chelsea player Pat Nevin said that there have always been punch-ups and drunken incidents involving playersdown the years, but in the past they were less likely to make the papers.

“It existed when I was playing and probably before that. You had those whose heads were turned by the fame and the money, even when the money was just twice the average wage,” he said.

“You also have to think about the way society treats these players. They are treated like gods and they are ordinary people. If you treat them like gods you will be disappointed.”

Barbara Ellen: It’s a little early to sanctify Steven Gerrard

Interesting to behold the canonisation of Liverpool and England player Steven Gerrard, as he awaits trial for ABH and affray, after an alleged incident in a Merseyside bar, involving several others, which left a part-time DJ with a tooth missing.

Gerrard faces a maximum five year sentence if convicted, but there is support for his innocence and good character everywhere. Liverpool manager Rafa Benítez is standing by him. England players David Beckham, Wayne Rooney and Rio Ferdinand are all said to have sent messages of support. The Football Association has no plans to bar Gerrard from the England squad.

Then there are the headlines ("You'll never walk alone!"), with quotes ranging from "He's so nice" to "He's really nice". OK, we get it - Gerrard is nice. Shortly before the incident, he was organising charity work with Kenny Dalglish. One wonders what Gerrard was doing at a bar in the first place - couldn't he have turned water into wine at home? And so we come to the "sick parrot" hanging upside down in the aviary of national reaction. On what actual grounds has Gerrard been tried by the media and the public and granted what amounts of a full, unofficial pardon?

I'd be as amazed and disappointed as anyone if it turns out that Gerrard is guilty. I am also aware that this Mexican wave of sympathy could amount to nothing more complicated than not wanting to lose a decent England player mere months before World Cup qualifiers. Still, you've got to admit, this impromptu anointing of Saint Steven of Huyton, straight after an alleged bar ruck, represents a pendulum swing in public perception of the national game.

It wasn't so long ago that Premier League footballers couldn't stub their toes on a nightclub bar stool without being condemned as multimillionaire thugs, social pariahs, touch papers of moral decline etc. For a time, our press could have amalgamated into the "Daily Roast", so numerous seemed the stories of love and respect movingly expressed between young ladies and their footballer lovers, as well as the other footballers who mysteriously appeared halfway through, presumably eager to "express their love and respect" too.

Only a few years ago, this was the public face of off-duty Premier League football: drunken, violent, sexually predatory pond-life, good only for vomiting into ashtrays and keeping Gucci in business, a lot of which was class-biased codswallop. However, the avalanche of bad press never managed to wound British football mortally. And that's because, while other sports (cricket, tennis, rugby) are important, football is the UK's masculine heartbeat, with footballers among the most vital role models we possess. That's how powerful football remains, and this fact should be celebrated, but surely only up to a point?

What is it with footballers that we have to keep up this simplistic lurching between :They can do no right" and "They can do no wrong", when the truth so often lies somewhere between? No one could deny that Paul Gascoigne was a football superstar, with a love of Mars Bars and pranks. But he also became a drunken wife-beater, whose 12-year-old son will be shown in tomorrow's Cutting Edge saying he wishes his dad would "go away" and doesn't want to "waste tears on him" . Who saw that coming with lovely, cheeky Gazza, the original cartoon fat lad, in the early 90s?

As much as Gerrard is a totally different entity, until we have the full facts about what happened in that Merseyside bar, it is ludicrous how automatically he has been exonerated, how unquestioningly he has been assured he will "never walk alone" by an over-sentimental public. The last time I looked, "nice" and "good at scoring goals" had yet to rank as synonyms for "not guilty". Just as it was unfair when footballers were bombarded with criticism when they were just young men getting drunk and having a sex life, it must be viewed as equally suspicious when the pendulum swings too far the other way.

Of course I'm compassionate - unless you're a man

One hopes that everyone has recovered from the myriad types of flu going around. Especially the men. It never fails to amaze me what death-bed drama queens men are. Only this morning, I received a message from my partner, thanking me for caring for him during his brave battle with man flu.

There was more than a whiff of sarcasm, with lots of references to "tough love", which probably alludes to my resentful trudging to get the 11th plate of Marmite on toast, booting him out of bed so that I could upgrade the sheets from the Turin Shroud or telling him to "die quietly" because Miss Marple was on.

Flo Nightingale's crown is safe. In my defence, men are never just sick, are they? It's always touch and go - him touching the remote control, you going to get another snack. Then there's the am-dram. Men are such hams when they're ill, all that swooning back on to pillows and clutching the wall on the way to the bathroom. It's Illness, a performance by Laurence Olivier. They say that behind every great man lies a great woman. To this I would add that behind every ill man there's a woman rolling her eyes, pleading compassion fatigue.

It's all very timely as a government thinktank has just decided that "compassion is in short supply from NHS workers". Many reasons are given for this sympathy shortfall - shorter patient stays, work pressures, more complicated ailments. Curiously, there's no mention of what would appear to be the most obvious reason of all - a lot of NHS workers are overworked and underpaid.

Looking around, one wonders whether compassion is evaporating generally. The primary school teachers discovered on Facebook calling a little girl a "chav". The ambulance men overheard during a 999 call allegedly debating whether a disabled man was "worth saving". These disturbing stories make you wonder whether Britain has become trapped in a dark version of those topical New Year future trends lists: "Not giving a toss about anyone else will be huge in 2009!"

Is the world really getting harder, less compassionate? Or, more likely, are these just extreme versions of the very British safety valve, of bitching and venting, and indulging in black humour to get through? As in, where compassion is concerned, whether within the NHS, or elsewhere, the heart is still (sort of) in the right place, even if the mouth isn't. And even if you are unfortunate enough to get tough lovin' from someone like me.

It'll be no joke if we take the controversy out of comedy

Confusing to hear that Celebrity Big Brother bosses have given the first post-Shilpa housemates lectures about "controversy". Watching them enter the house, there was La Toya least-known Jackson, Ben boyband bloke, Lucy model thingy ... I have a hunch it's going to be "non-controv" (read: throat-slashingly boring).

Let's hope Ulrika, Tommy Sheridan and Mini-Me, Verne Troyer, will liven things up. Admirible really for CBB to include a person of restricted height to make society confront its inbuilt prejudices. But enough of Terry Christian.

As if the CBB dweebs would dare to be "controv" anyway. Look at the cautionary tale of Jonathan Ross. He definitely deserved public censure over Sachsgate, mainly for the bullying.

However, he did not deserve the subsequent media stalking. Comes to something when a man can't ride a bike without headlines screeching: "UNREPENTANT!"

Also worrying were TV bosses ordering Ross to tone down his style on his return - comedy manacles would be unfair. On all of us.

Maybe this is what I see in the CBB house - for the most part, non-offensive, over-careful, focus-group-proof, Z-list celebrity plop-plop. When people asked for Ross to be punished, it happened. That should have been the end of it. Should popular culture become neutered, we'll have more to worry about than a dimly recalled radio prank, however ill-conceived.

Read more...

Premier League: Liverpool promise Steven Gerrard ‘full support’ in wake of assault and affray charge

Liverpool today announced the club will give its "full support" to captain Steven Gerrard after he was charged with assault and affray in connection with a brawl at a bar. The England international was charged early on Tuesday alongside two other men after spending 24 hours in police custody following the incident in the seaside town of Southport.

He had been celebrating his side's 5-1 victory at Newcastle that extended the club's lead at the top the Premier League to three points. In a statement, Liverpool said: "Steven has been an outstanding servant to Liverpool for the last 10 years and the club will give him all the support he needs at this time."

The midfielder was released on bail to appear in court on January 23. In a statement, a Merseyside police spokesman said: "Merseyside police has charged Steven Gerrard, 28 years, of Formby, Sefton, John Doran, 29, and Ian Smith, 19 years, both from Huyton, Liverpool, with assault occasioning actual bodily harm and affray following an incident at Bold Street in Southport in the early hours of Monday, December 29. The three men will be appearing at North Sefton magistrates' court on January 23."

The fracas took place at the Lounge Inn in Bold Street, following which the venue's DJ, a a 34-year-old local man, required hospital treatment after suffering facial injuries. Police were called and subsequently arrested six men on suspicion of assault in nearby Lord Street.

It remains unclear what exactly happened at the popular celebrity nightspot, but one report has suggested that Gerrard and a group of his friends got involved in an altercation after the DJ refused to allow them to choose the songs played on the venue's sound system. Gerrard is a big fan of Phil Collins and counts the singer's greatest hits as his favourite album. He is also partial to Coldplay.

The Lounge Inn remained shut yesterday but evidence of a fight inside could be seen through the windows. Spots of blood were clearly visible on the floor, along with shards of broken glass.

Gerrard has been capped by England 70 times and has captained his country on four occasions. He was made an MBE last year and received an honorary fellowship from Liverpool John Moores University.

It is unsure whether or not the player will return to training with his team-mates ahead of Liverpool's FA Cup third-round tie away to Preston on Saturday, a match he was never likely to feature in.

Read more...