Van Persie happy to walk on mild side

IT is one of football’s hoariest old cliches, the belief that the game’s wild things must be indulged rather than transformed.

Throw light on their dark side, so the theory goes, and the player himself will be eclipsed.

It is the reason those three red devils, Eric Cantona, Roy Keane and Wayne Rooney, were routinely indulged by Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, why Billy Bremner was able to run riot at Leeds. But not everyone buys into the theory.