Craig Hignett: Last News

Former Aberdeen midfielder Craig Hignett has opened up on the personal problems behind his nightmare six-month spell at Pittodrie.

Paul Gascoigne invented a "weird" game that could last for hours and left a room peppered with holes - but he wouldn't let his teammate leave until it was finished.Gazza's game apparently involved two snooker cues being propped up against a wall. Whoever was playing had to bowl at them, cricket style, with a snooker ball. The aim was to snap the cues with the ball.

Paul Gascoigne once made his mate drive seven hours to retrieve a missing mug from a teammate's house - because he couldn't sleep knowing it had "lost its mates". Gazza apparently told his best pal, Jimmy 'Five Bellies, Gardner, to make the 400-mile round trip from the North East to Birmingham, in the dead of night. He had been on his way to bed when he spotted a coffee cups was missing from the mug tree in his kitchen, at his home in Seaham, County Durham.READ MORE: 'Ridiculous' Premier League hero 'smoked 80 fags a day' but was 'f***ing brilliant'When Jimmy realised Gazza's Middlesbrough teammate and housemate Andy Townsend had taken it to his family home, he was given the job.Boro manager Bryan Robson had tasked "sensible" Townsend with keeping Gazza in check by living with him.Gazza, Townsend and Jimmy had a routine where they'd each arrive at training with a mug of coffee brought from home.

Premier League's highest paid player once refused to pay his milkman £4.50, telling him: "It's an honour I drink from your dairy."That's according to one of Fabrizio Ravanelli's former Middlesbrough teammates, who said the eccentric Italian "just thought he shouldn’t be paying for stuff like that" because of who he was. Ravanelli made the previously untrodden journey from European giants Juventus to Teesside in the summer of 1996 after Bryan Robson agreed to pay £7.5m for the striker's services. READ MORE: Ex-England star can ‘make his willy disappear’ and showed ‘trick’ to Steven GerrardBankrolled by fiercely ambitious and extremely wealthy local businessman Steve Gibson, the club paid him a reported £42,000-a-week, making him the league's biggest earner.

READ MORE: Ex-Prem ref admits officials may subconsciously favour players they like with decisionsTugay spent eight years at Blackburn Rovers between 2001 and 2009 after joining from Rangers.Manager Graeme Souness paid £1.3m for the Turkish international after working with him at Galatasaray. An elegant player with an eye for a pass, he'd won the Scottish Premier League and Scottish Cup with Rangers then helped Blackburn to a League Cup victory at the end of his first season with the club, in 2002.Craig Hignett, who played for Rovers between 2000 and 2003, was gobsmacked by his ability - despite his unhealthy habit.He told the Undr The Cosh podcast: "He was silly. If you look at Tugay, right, he smokes like a trooper - at half-time, he’d smoke - he's not fast, couldn’t run long distance, couldn’t head it - there were a lot of things he couldn’t do.

World Cup winner with a left foot like a traction engine was considerably older than he claimed, according to teammates.Branco, who lifted the Jules Rimet trophy at USA 1994, arrived at Middlesbrough in 1996. A set piece specialist, the left back scored a memorable long range free-kick to knock out the Netherlands in the quarter-finals. He also hammered home a penalty in their shootout victory over Italy in the final.READ MORE: Ex-England star can ‘make his willy disappear’ and showed ‘trick’ to Steven GerrardWhen Bryan Robson brought him to the Premier League club, where he already had a couple of popular samba boys in Juninho and Emerson, fans and players had cause for excitement.