The drugs don't work - The Guardian (The Fiver)

'As stories pertaining to drug abuse go, news that Abel Xavier had failed a tested positive for a banned substance was about as shocking as tabloid revelations that Kate Moss is partial to a line or two of the devil's dandruff. Not content with looking and dressing like a 60s acid casualty, the hirsute bottle-blond invariably plays football like a man whose pre-match meal consists of several large slices of hash-cake, washed down by enough litres of magic mushroom tea to sink a battleship.

So you can imagine our total astonishment when it emerged that the unnamed drug Xavier tested positive for was not in fact recreational, leaving the Fiver to conclude by a judicious process of elimination that it must have been performance enhancing. And while he has yet to comment publicly on the affair, the much-travelled Portugal international is privately protesting his innocence, and what's more - he can produce DVDs of every match he's played in for the past three years to prove it.

Given this less than healthy prognosis from a man usually renowned for his breezily optimistic defence of the indefensible, the Fiver can't help but feel if Abel had forgotten his test, at least then he could blame his memory lapse on all that peroxide eating his brain.'