Expert News and Analysis of the Championship League

Striker Mar­lon King has recently been released from prison and after his free­dom he con­ducted an inter­view with Sky Sports where many thought he came across as quite gen­uine, although oth­ers saw him as a wolf in sheep’s cloth­ing. King still protests his inno­cence over the offence that saw him given an 18 month jail sen­tence (reduced to 9), in which he was found guilty of sex­u­ally assault­ing a female when out at a Lon­don night club and he is deter­mined to show that he was mis­taken in iden­tity. If King is to prove this then he has a lot of work to do, as his pre­vi­ous 13 crim­i­nal con­vic­tions prior to this one paint a pic­ture that prob­a­bly already made up people’s minds that this is a bad apple. Now that King is a free man, his agent wasted no time in try­ing to find his client a new club, offer­ing him to a num­ber of Cham­pi­onship clubs and even Pre­mier League ones. Neil Warnock is tak­ing him under con­sid­er­a­tion and some have claimed that Coven­try will be King’s next des­ti­na­tion. But does the for­mer Gilling­ham man really deserve another chance to work in this line of work?

King is a striker, but he won’t exactly set the world on fire and he’s unlikely to bag you 20 goals a sea­son, but the job he does up front is impor­tant for what­ever striker he sup­ports and he can be a use­ful tar­get man. His most recently club was Wigan, but found him­self loaned out to Hull and Mid­dles­brough when they par­tic­i­pated in England’s top league, show­ing that many man­agers in the game feel he is a use­ful player in the Pre­mier League. It is highly unlikely that any Pre­mier League team will take on a 30 year old who has just come out of prison, but it is under­stand­able why many Cham­pi­onship teams may be con­sid­er­ing him. He has abil­ity and at the age of 30 he should at the height of his tal­ent and the fact he is on a free trans­fer makes him even more appealing.

But then there’s that image. I’ve been on an away day to Old­ham when they had Lee Hughes up front for them and the amount of abuse he still receives from away fans is intense. In 2004, Hughes was jailed after he caused a fatal car crash which saw one per­son dead; Hughes fled the scene and handed him­self in 36 hours later. Peo­ple shout things like “They should have thrown away the key” and fans were keen to let Mr. Hughes know that they thought he was a “sick human being” — I could write a num­ber of other things they said, but I’m sure The Gaffer wouldn’t be too happy see­ing them on his site! Basi­cally, the major­ity of foot­ball fans you meet will use it against the player and you’ll find few who feel that play­ers who are guilty of such unspeak­able crimes should never be allowed to play the game again. King may want to clear his name, but he’ll always be labelled as one of those players.

I’m a New­cas­tle fan and you’re prob­a­bly aware that my team has the noto­ri­ous Joey Bar­ton. Bar­ton receives the same abuse Hughes does, although he hasn’t com­mit­ted a crime such as mur­der, he has sev­eral inci­dents that have involved fight­ing, often fuelled by his alco­holism. I some­times feel a lit­tle bit sorry for Bar­ton (not just as a New­cas­tle fan), because his half brother was involved in a racially moti­vated mur­der of a young boy, some­thing which has led many to label Joey him­self as a racist, which couldn’t be fur­ther from the truth. The minute you’re a prison alumni, such as Bar­ton or Hughes, then all of a sud­den people’s per­cep­tion of you changes and its a heavy social load on any­body. Bar­ton will always be labelled as a hor­ri­ble man, but that is because you rarely hear the good he does from the likes of Sky Sports News and the BBC. I don’t say his actions were noth­ing, it is never right to assault any­one for any rea­son, but Bar­ton has taken mas­sive steps to improve his life; he hasn’t had a drop of alco­hol for two years and the num­ber of char­i­ties and good causes he is involved in and con­tributes to is count­less. He rarely speaks about them and they’ll rarely make the head­lines because who is inter­ested in that? If you’re read­ing this Mr. Bar­ton, I’m more wor­ried about what that hor­ri­ble mous­tache is doing for your image lately!

I do think at times celebri­ties and sports per­son­al­i­ties are pro­tected too much when it comes to the legal sys­tem, but if peo­ple are really keen to turn their life around and con­tribute some­thing to soci­ety then why stop them? Craig Bel­lamy is another exam­ple, he is a player that every­one expects is a hor­ri­ble per­son due to the fact he is always com­plain­ing on the pitch. I’m not a fan of Bel­lamy any­more (if you know about his bust up with Shearer, you will under­stand why New­cas­tle fans don’t respect him), but I had a mate who’s mother worked as a recep­tion­ist at a children’s hos­pi­tal in New­cas­tle. She wouldn’t have a bad word said about Bel­lamy because there was one child in par­tic­u­lar he would put things off to visit and he was one of the friend­liest footballer’s you could ever meet, a lot of the time he wasn’t even going along with the club or to improve his image or any­thing — he just did it because he wanted to help.

I’m not a believer in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment or the death penalty — you want an eye for an eye then you’re a hyp­ocrite. I don’t think King deserves absolute for­give­ness — he was found guilty of a crime and was right­fully pun­ished for it — his actions were dis­gust­ing. The fact is most of this could be stopped with the right guid­ance, play­ers like Bar­ton and King are from areas of the low­est eco­nomic class — crime is every­where in their envi­ron­ment. The major­ity of peo­ple who are in prison come from these sort of areas, as a lack of oppor­tu­ni­ties and no prospects can lead a num­ber of peo­ple to crime and I don’t want to get into the whole “nature/nurture debate” but you basi­cally learn from your envi­ron­ment. Sir Alex Fer­gu­son once said he believed that if Paul Gas­coigne had signed for Man Utd instead of Tot­ten­ham (he chose Spurs because their chair­man bought Gazza’s par­ents a new house in Gateshead), he wouldn’t have had as many prob­lems with things such as alco­holism and depres­sion as he had. You give some of these lads all this money and put them in a com­pet­i­tive and alpha male envi­ron­ment and they’re going to go on their instincts and act out when things don’t go their way.

To say that Mar­lon King can’t go back to work is some­what ille­gal, but in my opin­ion he should give proof that he is really mak­ing a pos­i­tive effort to reha­bil­i­tate him­self and become a pos­i­tive part of soci­ety. We are sup­posed to live in a for­giv­ing soci­ety, but this is the sec­ond time King has come out of prison (the first was for pur­chas­ing a stolen BMW, he was found not guilty of assault­ing a police offi­cer though) and that would lead many to think that he already had his sec­ond chance. The money foot­ballers earn make this a dif­fi­cult sub­ject for many, peo­ple do not like the fact that an ex-convict can walk out of prison and then receive their yearly salary in one week and in King’s case, some of his pre­vi­ous offences are dis­gust­ing and it is under­stand­able why so many believe he is a ter­ri­ble person.

For me, I look at the likes of Tony Adams and Paul Mer­son who made big mis­takes in their career but were keen to see that they could pre­vent this in the future by start­ing the sport­ing chance clinic which has helped the likes of Joey Bar­ton get his life back on track. Mer­son is now a love­able pun­dit for Sky Sports and Tony Adam’s is man­ag­ing some Azer­bai­jani team (suc­cess) and their past prob­lems are almost over­shad­owed by the fact that they now play a big part in help­ing peo­ple learn from their mis­takes. Mr. King could take a note out of their book, he is cer­tainly not a house­hold name or what I would con­sider a role model to young kids (if any­one wanted to put that as their argu­ment then present me the child who dreams of becom­ing the next Mar­lon King) but a lot of these play­ers changed their ways and decided they would help oth­ers. If you want to get back involved with the pro­fes­sion you love after ruin­ing your chance then why not help pre­vent this from hap­pen­ing in the future.

I’m all for King return­ing if he wants to stop young play­ers in sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tions to him make the same mis­takes — if he is help­ing the prob­lem as opposed to being part of it then his past issues and offences should not even come under con­sid­er­a­tion. But there is always that fear: fool me 14 times, shame on you — fool me 15 times, shame on me.

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