ON THIS DAY

One of the reasons why Joey Barton always seemed to have the word 'controversial' preceding his name came at the Manchester City Christmas Party on this day in 2004. Reserve-team player James Tandy set fire to Joey Barton's shirt and Barton responded by stubbing a lit cigar into Tandy's eye. Barton suffered a £60,000 club fine and paid £65,000 in damages to the injured player.

It was announced that Rio Ferdinand’s punishment for missing a drugs test in September was a fine of £50,000 and an eight-month ban from football at both club and international level. The test was scheduled to have taken place at Manchester United’s Carrington training ground but Ferdinand forgot about it and went shopping instead.

Arsenal captain Tony Adams found himself in the dock at Southend Crown Court following his arrest after a car crash when he was found to be more than four times over the legal alcohol limit for driving. He was sentenced to four months behind bars but was released from prison on Friday 15th February 1991 after serving half his sentence. The following day he was in the Arsenal reserve side which played Reading reserves. The Highbury gate for an Arsenal second-team match was usually in the hundreds but around 7,000 were present that day to welcome back the Arsenal favourite. In future years newspaper front pages and his autobiography - Addicted - detailed the problems Tony Adams had with the demon drink over the years which included regularly playing in matches while suffering with a hangover.