Paul Merson is a man with a troubled past, but the Sky Sports pundit is now in a place where he can look back and laugh at some of the unfortunate situations he found himself in during his playing career, and he did just that on the most recent episode of 'The Fantasy Football Club'.

Mark Noble was the guest in studio, and had just finished telling the tale of the first time he cried on a football pitch when Merson was asked if he had ever done the same.

The former Arsenal striker then revealed that he had, but it wasn't for footballing reasons. Instead, Merson's battle with gambling addiction saw him lose a large amount of money which reduced him to tears, much to the amusement of his teammates who thought he had taken the loss particularly badly.


Of course, it's nowhere near as good a story as the time when he needed Harry Redknapp to mind £30,000 that he owed to 'an Irish mob' during a match, as told by Redknapp in his autobiography, but Merson knows how to tell a good self-deprecating tale.