City Traffic

I’ve just realised that Manchester City players are fast becoming a theme here, so I’ll put a stop to that soon, but I couldn't resist this as it involves my two favourite things - crazy footballers and their weird cars (they’re not really my two favourite things, I just said that for effect. Foam bananas and animals wearing hats are the things that really top the list). While before we have simply focussed on the extreme lack of taste on display, this time the news is of slightly more pleasing a nature. It goes a little something like this: Footballers, in the vain hope that people will want to look at the crisp packets, muddy football boots and teammates' wives sat in their cars with them, have taken to tinting the windows in order to prevent prying eyes. We knew that though, right? And many people who aren’t footballers and aren’t earning £100,000 a week also do this. Not everyone, however, has the police sitting outside their place of work waiting for them to arrive just so that they can slap some on the spot fines on them. That is, apparently, what happened just this week, outside city’s training ground, which is near Carrington, incidentally, and looks from above like this:


Thank you Google Maps. So Kolo Toure, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Patrick Vieira, Stephen Ireland and Shay Given all arrived for work (i.e. running around a bit and kicking a football) to find plod waiting for them with £30 tickets for having their windows too dark. They were told that if they wanted to drive the cars they’d have to wind the windows down fully but, unfortunately, the club arranged for a local window tinting specialist to come and fix all the problems while they were training – boo. The police said they weren’t targeting any particular group of people, simply saying, “We never deliberately target any one person or group and will issue penalties, ranging from verbal advice to fixed penalty notices or prohibition notices, to those found breaking the law." Hey just happened to be sitting in an otherwise deserted country lane around the time local premiership footballers were likely to turn up...hmm.

Anyway, the real reason I’m writing about this is of course to provide an excuse to find some pictures of ridiculous cars bought by those with more football skill than sense. Google normally provides on such occasions and doesn’t disappoint his time. Most of the pictures I found were of cars owned by Stephen Ireland and – one of the clutch of players reprimanded for window indiscretions. First up a rather disgusting thing to do to a Range Rover:


This one he apparently had changed from red to blue after some gentle ribbing (i.e. merciless piss taking) from his team mates – and it still looks awful:

This was his present to his girlfriend:


But this surely takes the prize. In fact, I’m not sure I believe this picture isn’t a) a joke, or, b) photoshopped (or indeed both of those things), but it is apparently a picture of one of Stephen Ireland’s vehicles – a hummer by the looks of it – with wooden cart wheels. Yes, that’s what I said – wooden cart wheels. Look away now if you are at all squeamish.


Still, looks like his tinted windows are legal, so it’s not all bad.