Newcastle United
Once a legitimate bad’un (on-pitch fights, jail time) the midfielder has reinvented himself as a reader in recent months. Or a reader of books of quotes – Barton has been firing out maxims from Nietzsche and Darwin and Orwell on Twitter all summer, establishing himself, in Premier League terms, as something like a Nobel‑rung scholar. Perhaps moved by all the heady wisdom, he recently led a minor online rebellion against the top brass at his club, Newcastle United, who tried to stop him Tweeting so freely. At the time of writing he is without certain employment Photograph: Owen Humphreys/PA
BBC commentator
It’s a bad sign, as a fan, if radio commentator Hall has been assigned to report on your team’s match for BBC 5 Live. An exaggerator, a roller of his Rs, Hall will have scripted a short and very dramatic monologue to describe, say, a rainy half of football at Goodison Park; when colleagues in the studio flash to him to reveal a goal or a red card, you’d think they had a man on the ground at Thermopylae. It’s a bad sign for fans because, as the Beeb’s resident eccentric, he is only ever allowed to go to the least important match of a Premier League weekend. It stings every time Photograph: Rex Features
Sky pundit
Bland analysis is what’s expected of most ex-players and managers who take a job in TV punditry. Yet somehow Souness, a genuine original, is allowed a regular berth on the Sky Sports panel, there establishing himself as the most interesting and unpredictable studio man in the game. Sometimes he’s so obviously pained by the quality of a match he’ll rock on his chair like a child battling stomach ache. Better still, when Souness has been properly impressed by a player or team, he might spend a full minute mistily exalting them. Is that the glimmer (you always wonder) of a tear in his eye? Photograph: Public Domain
Manchester City
A dreadful man, if reports of his arrogance and vanity are to be believed. But whenever the Italian-born striker is out on the pitch you cannot take your eyes off him. He’ll bounce about full of inexplicable rage one minute (usually when the game is in its most placid phase) then appear blissfully unconcerned during pressure periods, looking quite bored before stepping up to take a crucial penalty, or shrugging off a goal. Most curious of all is the sinister half-smile Balotelli adopts whenever he feels wronged, as if he knows a secret the rest of the football world does not Photograph: Andrew Yates/Getty Images
Liverpool
The bunny-rabbit smile alone does not make Suarez an character, though it’s hard not to pay attention to a player who goes about his game with such an expression of mad delight. Really, Liverpool’s Uruguayan striker has a dark side, earning all sorts of world-footballing enmity last season when, in the Dutch league, he was banned for biting an opponent’s shoulder. He also made a bit of a legend for himself at the 2010 World Cup, crudely batting away a certain goal with his fists in Uruguay’s game against Ghana, denying the Africans a place in the semi-finals. The smile, here, masks a slipperiness Photograph: Lee Smith/Action Images
Tottenham Hotspur
He’d not place in many personality contests, being a bit of a dour sort, but the Tottenham Hotspur defender counts as a Premier League original simply for being one of its few employees to be honest about his actual interest in football. He has none, seeing it as “just a job”, and admitting to preferring his hobby of DJing if pressed. The disinterest feeds visibly into his playing style. Next time you check out the Spurs defence, mid-match, there’ll be three guys looking intent and as if they quite desperately need to wee – and one who might as well be shopping at Tesco. That’s Benoît Photograph: Ian Kington/Getty Images
Blackburn Rovers owner
The chairman of Venky’s, the Indian poultry giant that owns Blackburn Rovers, has for about a year served as the public face of an increasingly bizarre regime at the club. Venky’s bought Blackburn in 2010, with Desai immediately speaking of new riches – before offering the incumbent manager just £5m to spend on new players. Recently the Desai era produced another swerve, when Blackburn’s players were featured in an advert that showed them chowing down on Venky’s chicken drumsticks in the changing room before a match. See it at tinyurl.com/3awgbtx Photograph: Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images
Wolverhampton Wanderers
The Wolverhampton Wanderers defender is the Premier League’s leading (perhaps only) exhibited artist, having shown off his paintings at galleries in 2010 and 2011. The work mostly depicts other footballing men – David Beckham taking a free kick, Wolves manager Mick McCarthy glowering – but Craddock has turned his hand, in the past, to polar bears, flowers, Audrey Hepburn… Writing on his website, craddock-art.com, the player says he credits his talent to A-level art lessons, and genetics. Prices start from £500 Photograph: Sam Bagnall/AMA
Arsenal
The Arsenal defender earns mention here solely by virtue of his hair. But what hair! It’s as if he sat down one day, took up graph paper and pencil, and planned how it might be possible to fit every single popular men’s style on to his head – at the same time. The result may not be the most practical for a footballer but it’s a true museum piece, multaneously bleached, braided, and ponytailed, with an undercut and a centre parting worked in too. Sagna once revealed the unusual cut stems back to a bet he made with his father – a bet, confusingly, the player says he won Photograph: PA Photos
QPR manager
With fans across the league likely to miss last season’s great eccentric, Ian Holloway (manager of relegated Blackpool), Warnock should help fill the gap. Boss at newly promoted QPR, he is, like Holloway, unusually frank, with such a liking for being ringed by post-match reporters he cannot help but give memorable quotes. “I was going to call him a sewer rat,” Warnock said of Blackburn striker El Hadji Diouf last season, “but that might insult sewer rats…” Expect plenty like this: Warnock’s list of personal feuds merits a whole subsection on Wikipedia Photograph: Jed Leicester/Getty Images
