Birmingham City have paved the way for Jermaine Pennant to play for them again this season, despite the winger being given a prison sentence for driving offences this week.
The 22-year-old, who is on loan from Arsenal, has been jailed for three months for driving offences, a sentence that would effectively end his season. However, Pennant can expect to serve only half of it and is likely to be released in time to play in Birmingham City’s match against Portsmouth on April 16.
Moreover, he will be welcomed back at St Andrew’s: the club’s manager Steve Bruce and chairperson David Gold promised before the verdict there would be a place for him even if he was given a custodial sentence.
”He is a talented young person and upon his release we will give him all the help and support he needs to turn his life around,” confirmed Karren Brady, Birmingham’s MD.
”We hope that under our guidance he will be able to make a positive contribution to football and society as a whole. We hope that Jermaine will accept his punishment and hope he learns from this mistake.”
To date Pennant has singularly failed to learn from the mistakes he has made since Arsenal paid Notts County £2-million for the then 15-year-old in 1999.
The transfer, which involved a record fee for one so young, gave Pennant the chance to escape a background that Barry Warburton, his defence counsel, told the court had been a contributory factor in his appearance before them.
Pennant grew up in the part of Nottingham known as The Meadows, an area rife with crime, including drug dealing, prostitution and guns. The area underwent a slum clearance programme in the early 1970s but that appears to have exacerbated the problems.
Unlike some of his peers Pennant was never in trouble as a youngster despite having to play a major role in raising his three younger siblings after his mother left home. Nevertheless his schooling was sporadic.
”When he left school and arrived at Arsenal, he had very little reading and writing skills,” said Warbuton. ”They [Arsenal] have in fact educated him.”
Pennant, though, responded with a string of misdemeanours at international and club level that appear to have resulted in Arsenal’s manager, Arsène Wenger, washing his hands of the wayward player.
The club’s statement after Monday’s verdict was noncommittal, to say the least.
”Jermaine Pennant has today been found guilty of drink-driving and driving while disqualified and uninsured at Aylesbury magistrates court,” it read. ”Jermaine (22) has made 26 appearances for the Arsenal first team since joining the club in 1999 and has been on loan with Birmingham City since January.”
Birmingham plan to discuss Pennant’s future with Arsenal, who are not expected to offer the player a new contract when the current one expires at the end of the season.
The latest episode in Pennant’s underachieving spell at Highbury has proved to be the last straw for Wenger. Arsenal sent the player out on loan to Watford, Leeds and Birmingham, giving him the chance to prove his worth to Arsenal’s first team. That lack of opportunities with the Gunners has contributed to Pennant’s frustrations, but his errant conduct was not confined to club level.
Indeed, he feared that being sent home from the England Under-21s after he broke a curfew before an international against Turkey in April 2003 would spell the end of his time at Highbury.
Wenger, however, gave him another chance by loaning him to Leeds United for the following season and Pennant made 34 Premiership starts. Even though the club was relegated, he impressed Kevin Blackwell, who was appointed manager during the campaign.
”Being a young lad with maybe a few hangers-on, it’s easy to see where the pitfalls have arisen and why he strayed once or twice,” said Blackwell. ”But he’s a good lad, Jermaine. There are top Premiership clubs interested in Jermaine and those clubs don’t go for people who are going to cause trouble all the time.”
Yet it was during that period with Leeds that Pennant was convicted of drinking and driving.
Ironically, had he stayed with the Highbury club and avoided the second brush with the law that has resulted in imprisonment, Pennant would have been an automatic choice in Arsenal’s understrength line-up for the FA Cup replay against Sheffield United at Bramall Lane on Tuesday night. — Â