No, not from the man who waxed lyrical about sardines and trawlers -- but certainly within the (recent) literary traditions of Arsenal centrebacks. The speaker is Sol Campbell, who if The Times is to be believed uttered the following as well, this time worthy of Bob Marley:

“These people have tried to hold me in bondage for so long with their lies, put me in a coma so I don’t know what’s going on. They try to corrupt my friends and family through jealousy and bitterness. But no more are they going to hold me in bondage.” [in-a Babylon... yeah-ah! - ed.]

What is all this? According to the Mirror, Sol has felt it necessary to react to "slurs" and "invective" which "question his sexuality" from the terraces: “I don’t go to all the premieres and top restaurants so, because people haven’t seen me in the papers with women, they assume things.”

How this is relevant to football is a mystery to Arseweb, as is the question of exactly why the suggestion someone might be gay counts as a "slur" or "invective." Not, by his own statements, that he is - and not that there's anything wrong with that, cf Jerry Seinfeld! But hey, better a team of gay Sols and Patricks than an entire team of womanizing Freunds...

More relevant is the centrality of Murdoch-run "newspapers" to this story. Having run out of Keane's and Ferguson's rubbish memoirs to serialise (and defend), private lives are under the microscope now in Murdochia. Up next: "Grimandi - my Spanish Fly weekend."