Charlton Athletic Online

There is a nice piece on the official site today about Darren Bent being the reading Champion at The Valley. Our Dazza says his favourite book is Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke.

The article also links to the Premier League website, and lists the reading champions of each of the twenty Premiership clubs.

This got my attention - who, from Arsenal's legion of foreign stars would be their champion?

Step forward Swiss defender Philippe Senderos! Yup, guessed that Sol and Ashley might not be able to see much further than the zero's on their contracts!

In fact, six non-English speaking (as a first language) overseas players are put forward as reading champions by the clubs; Senderos at Arsenal, Eidur Gudjohnsen at Chelsea, Moritz Volz at Fulham, Ruud van Nistelrooy at Manchester United, Thomas Gaardsoe at the Baggies, and Lomana LuaLua at Pompey.

Ex-Addick Paul Konchesky has obviously raised the IQ quotient in East London as he is the Hammers champion it seems! However, the book he says is a favourite has been designed to mentally bring him in line with other Eastenders - it's about The Kray Twins!

The books that the players name as their favourites are fairly well split between "adult" and childrens books, though why the Premier League asked them to be split out is interesting (Can't have all these teenagers reading The Da Vinci Code (Kevin Davies) can we!!!).

You can tell who of the players has kids (Kelly, Carsley, Freidal, Caldwell...), as the books they chose seem to be of the bed-time variety that they have to read out to their offspring.

There is a smattering of sports books too (Clemence, Delaney, Taylor), but the saddest entry just has to be Gudjohnsen's...he names team-mate John Terry's "My Season" as his most cherished reading matter, probably because Eidur himself gets the odd mention from his best mate!

This initiative by the Premier League and also the clubs welcome support of local libraries will hopefully help large numbers of kids and adults who find reading a chore. It should be applauded!