The Premier League's Biggest Party Boys

Premier League footballers are paid millions of pounds to train for a few hours a day and play a game at weekends.

In their spare time, they are expected to recuperate and not do anything that puts their physical fitness in jeopardy.

That said, Premier League footballers are also partial to celebrating their own success with a few adult beverages when the sun goes down. Quite often, things escalate to the extent that the police need to get involved.

Here's a few of the English top flight's best-known party boys... 

Phil Bardsley

With his gruelling training regimes and bans on mayonnaise and ice-filled soft drinks, Paolo Di Canio is easily the most tyrannical ruler in the Premier League.

The Sunderland gaffer was extremely unimpressed with defender Phil Bardsley last May when he was pictured laying on the floor of a casino covered in £50 notes. He denied being drunk, but he was cut from the squad set to face Tottenham a few days later, with Di Canio vowing never to play him again via The Daily Mail.

Bardsley put his foot in it once again last week when he apparently mocked the Black Cats' opening day defeat on Instagram. 

Andy Carroll

After a miserable stint at Liverpool, Andy Carroll is now formally on the books at West Ham.

The Geordie striker did well to pass his medical, however, seeing as he was spotted bare-chested, clutching a champagne bottle in a Las Vegas nightclub 36 hours beforehand. 

Carroll had a less-positive nightclub experience in 2010 when he was charged with assaulting another reveller. 

Ashley Cole

As the highest-paid defender in the world, Ashley Cole needs to spend his disposable income on something. That something, however, appears to be nightclub tabs—here he is escorting a young lady to a London nightspot in May and here looking a little sweaty in Hollywood in June.

On another night in the summer, The Sun allege that Cole had to be separated from Anton Ferdinand during a post-nightclub row. 

And in 2008, the 32-year-old was accused of cheating on the "nation's sweetheart" Cheryl Cole after a drunken nightclub visit with a blonde hairdresser, which concluded with him being sick while they were being intimate. 

Jermaine Pennant

Over the years, Jermaine Pennant has made headlines for the wrong reasons far too often: he left a Porsche abandoned in a Spanish train station car park when he left the country; he was caught cheating by his Page 3 girlfriend on his own CCTV system; he went to jail for drink-driving in 2005 and earned a suspended sentence for the same crime last year. 

Pennant is also partial to a nightclub visit, a predilection that ended in arrest for assault last year. 

Nile Ranger

He's technically no longer a Premier League player since being released by Newcastle in March, but Nile Ranger constantly courts extra-curricular controversy.

In 2011, he was arrested for being drunk and disorderly outside a Newcastle nightclub. This came a few months after he was admonished for posing on a social network with a gun.  

In the picture above, he has spelt his own name with money, which he may have had to use to cover legal costs of recent assault and rape charges. 

Wayne Rooney

When you are paid £250,000 a week and regarded as one of the best strikers in the world, you are expected to be in decent shape at the start of each season. 

Wayne Rooney, however, always seems to need a few weeks to catch up to the pace, perhaps due to his penchant for living it up in the summer.

In years gone by, the England forward has been pictured smoking and drinking in Las Vegas, and was once pictured smoking and urinating in the street outside a Manchester club. 

Craig Bellamy

Cardiff's fiery forward Craig Bellamy has got into mischief after sundown on numerous occasions, most notably when he was arrested for assaulting a woman at a nightclub.

According to ESPN, the victim in court recounted the conversation leading up to the incident:

"

I turned around and said to him 'excuse me, why couldn't you wait in that gap there?'

He said to me 'you're too f***ing fat to get past me, you fat slag.'

"

Classy stuff from Mr Bellamy there.

Nicklas Bendtner

Nicklas Bendtner is more than partial to a night on the town, with too many nightclub fracas on his rap sheet to list.

His finest moment may have come in 2009, though, when he was escorted to his car by a bouncer at 4am with his trousers down. 

The Arsenal star's record of night-time fun also includes an arrest for wrecking cars with Lee Cattermole, an arrest for a hotel brawl and a more recent arrest for drink driving. 

Have we missed any Premiership party boys? Let us know in the comments!

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