Former Arsenal star speaks of his life in crime

Ex-Arsenal and Liverpool player Jermaine Pennant has spoken of his life in crime and how he almost lost his life when his gang was ambushed by a rival group.

The 35-year-old revealed this in an interview with the Mirror where he also divulged that he hid the truth from Arsenal 21 years ago in order to visit a friend left in a coma in hospital following a brutal attack.

Pennant's pal Benjamin Smith was stabbed 15 times by a gang from St Ann's and was left for dead with the initial’s ST - for St Ann’s - carved into his cheek.

Pennant, playing for Arsenal at the time, rushed to his pal's side without the club's knowledge in the hope his voice might wake him from his coma.

“My friends were all dead proud of me, making it from the Meadows to the Premier League, so his mum thought it might help if he heard my voice," he said.

“I didn’t dare tell Arsenal where I was going. It was horrible seeing him like that. I didn’t know what to say, I just told him what I’d been up to. I wasn’t there when he woke up, I was just glad he did.

“He was so badly injured he has to take tablets for the rest of his life.

“People say I didn’t fulfil my potential as a player. Maybe they are right, but given where I came from, I think I did pretty well.”

In his new autobiography Mental, which will be serialised this week, he writes: “They had knives, baseball bats and some guns.

In 2005 Pennant was jailed for 30 days for drink driving while disqualified after crashing his friend’s Mercedes into a lamppost. On his release, he became the first Premier League star to play wearing an electronic ankle tag.

He still attracts controversy and has even signed up for the next series of Celebrity Big Brother, he says to try to prove he is “not a bad guy”.