Bellamy's Personality Disorder: Man City's Jekyll and Hyde

(Photo by Alex Livesey/Getty Images)

Craig Bellamy has had a difficult rapport with fans for many years.

Should he be in your starting eleven he can delighting and distressing in equal measures—with both spectacular goals and recklessness in his repertoire.

However, opposing fans rarely have a good word to say about him, making him fairly unpopular whichever terrace you may be sitting in.

The Manchester derby on Sunday showed both sides to his character within a few minutes.

Having scored two well-taken goals, adding to the one he scored eight days earlier against Arsenal, he chose to lash out at a fan who invaded the pitch.

Mark Hughes has since defended his player, but comparisons with Brian Clough's famous disciplining of fans (after a match between Notts Forest and QPR in 1989) is completely void of reason.

Firstly, Clough was hitting his own fans, during a pitch invasion which he knew would cost Forest dearly while English football was still feeling the sting of hooliganism.

Secondly, Bellamy approached the fan after he had been apprehended by three stewards and then went on to slap him, in what Hughes calls a "defensive" action, while the fan was held back .

Hughes has a long-working relationship with Bellamy dating back to spells with Wales and Blackburn Rovers, so you could maybe expect some sympathy. But when footballers are regularly touted as role models, condoning his player's violence is rather counter-productive.

His opinion on such matters seems to be becoming needlessly arbitrary, coming just a week after his attempts to play down Adebayor's stamp on Robin Van Persie.

The fact remains that Bellamy had no need to get involved, however emotional the game was.

This is not the first instance of Bellamy's aggression getting the better of him. He was sent off during Newcastle's Champions League tie with Inter Milan for lashing out at Marco Matterazzi and was famously fined by Liverpool for brandishing a golf club at teammate John Arne Riise.

This is also without mentioning other dark patches in his career, such as his ignominious collapse of relations with Newcastle boss Graeme Souness.

Bellamy is said to have feigned injury after refusing to play on the right wing. Souness subsequently declared Bellamy would never play for them again and was swiftly loaned to Celtic and then sold to Blackburn.

He has also accumulated a staggering 48 yellow and two red cards since he signed for Magpies in 2001.

Some may argue that without his aggressive spirit he would not be half the player he is.

But passion can exist without aggression, and maybe Bellamy would have been left with a less chequered career if passion was what fueled him.

I'm sure Newcastle fans would certainly agree.

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