Seasons greetings
The Christmas night out can offer footballers some rare respite from their frantic festive schedule.
However, there’s always going to be someone who takes things too far.
So here we are: the 11 most infamous Christmas dos in the history of the Premier League, including sex, alcohol and the most inappropriate Secret Santa imaginable…
West Ham, 2001
The Hammers squad of 2001 took debauchery to new heights when Hayden Foxe climbed onto the bar of the Sugar Reef club before urinating on everything below him.
An unnamed second player was then sick across some furniture and the West Ham players were, unsurprisingly, kicked out.
“There were no fights or yelling of abuse or anything,” Foxe later said. “What I did was wrong and got blown right out of proportion.” The Australian was fined two weeks’ wages and made to pay for their £2,000 bar bill.
Manchester City, 2004
In one of his earlier troublemaking episodes, Joey Barton spent a lot of the team night out at a Manchester night club trying to burn holes in his team-mates fancy dress costumes with a cigar while decked out as Jimmy Saville.
But when teenage upstart Jamie Tandy responded by doing the same to him with a cigarette lighter, Barton stubbed out his cigar in the 18-year-old’s eye.
He was duly slapped with a £60,000 fine to ensure he’d never misbehave with a team-mate in the future. Ah.
Manchester United, 2007
In the aftermath of United’s 2007 antics, Alex Ferguson cancelled any further Christmas parties as a punishment.
The do took place at the Great John Street hotel, with the story going that the players enjoyed a 13-hour long binge that cost them £4,000 each and involved karaoke and strip clubs.
It culminated with a party at the hotel at which 80 hand-picked women were present, with no WAGs in sight, with a tabloid source describing the scene as ‘a horrendous cattle market’.
Tottenham, 2009
Harry Redknapp hoped to clamp down on Spurs’ reputation for partying when he arrived, saying that his squad would ‘never take the liberty’ of holding a festive do without his approval.
What he didn’t realise was that they’d done just that only two days earlier, with skipper Robbie Keane and 16 other squad members travelling to Dublin on the pretence of enjoying a golfing getaway.
The resulting night out cost the players £2000 each and they got back just 72 hours before playing Wolves in the Premier League, a game they lost 1-0. Keane was sent packing on loan to Celtic a month later.
QPR, 2014
Harry Redknapp insisted there would be no celebration for his relegation struggling side in 2014. “I’m not into Christmas parties, not for footballers,” he said. “I think it’s more aggravation than it’s worth.”
He was spot on. A Sunday pub lunch was organised by the squad and what ensued remains unclear. A witness told The Sun that a woman threw a drink at Rio Ferdinand, sparking a scuffle in which Steven Caulker was left bleeding and Joey Barton tried to keep the peace.
However, the club insisted Caulker had fallen over getting out of his car and that the lunch had been event-free. Which, to be fair, sounds likelier than Barton being the cool head in the room.
Chelsea, 1994
We’ll never know why Blues boss Glenn Hoddle thought it was a good idea to task Vinnie Jones with organising the club’s bash in 1994. He lived up to his Crazy Gang image by setting up a lock-in in a London pub where the entertainment for the night was dwarf tossing.
“The idea was to pick up a dwarf and hurl him as far as you could,” team-mate Tony Cascarino later explained. “I had a go, but I can't remember how I did. They were heavier than I expected.”
Jones was back at Wimbledon within half a year of his party. Coincidence?
Chelsea, 1994
Newcastle, 1998
Politically incorrect presents were the order of the day when the Magpies squad got together for their Christmas do.
German midfielder Dietmar Hamann received a copy of Adolf Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’, while Alessandro Pistone was given a sheep’s heart, intended as a swipe about his lack of commitment on the pitch.
“I’m sure it was a joke,” Pistone said. “The others had some really funny presents too: Temuri Ketsbaia got a hairbrush and Duncan Ferguson a prison shirt.” Hilarious.
West Ham, 1998
Trevor Sinclair and Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock landed in hot water after a 1970s-themed party in Essex, when they ripped off the wing mirrors of a parked Mini Cooper after being kicked out after last orders.
Ruddock was charged with affray and Sinclair criminal damage, but Ruddock was later acquitted due to conflicting evidence.
Sinclair didn’t get away scot free though, as he was fined £250 and made to fork over a further £225 in compensation.
Leeds, 2001
The powers that be at Leeds were desperate for a quiet Christmas do after Lee Bowyer and Jonathan Woodgate had been involved in an unsavoury incident outside a nightclub.
Boss David O’Leary held a meeting to underline to the squad their responsibilities before the party and chairman Peter Ridsdale even got security guards to follow them through the city on their army-themed pub crawl.
Despite that, Robbie Fowler managed to get in a scrap with a photographer who attempted to picture him sleeping in a taxi on his way back to the hotel, allegedly damaging a camera and resulting in the striker’s arrest – although he was later released without charge.
Leicester, 2001
The dynamic duo of Dennis Wise and Robbie Savage always had the potential for stirring up trouble and they duly delivered at Leicester’s 2001 festive fiesta.
Tasked with giving Savage a Secret Santa present, Wise handed the midfielder a teddy bear wearing a Foxes top with a sex toy attached, along with a message reading: “You're the only p**** in a Leicester shirt.”
Inevitably, it caused a scuffle, which boss Dave Bassett did his best to talk down. “The players bought each other presents and there was a bit of mickey taking which was a bit pornographic,” he said. “But that's the way it is. When I was a player the same sort of thing used to happen at parties. It's a bit of good-hearted mickey-taking.”
