Premier League legend Ian Wright has opened up about the time he was allegedly bullied by Crystal Palace team-mate Jim Cannon.
Wright, 60, is one of the most popular players of his generation. While he is best known for his time with Arsenal, he first began to make his name at Selhurst Park, where he was a prodigal youngster attracting many admirable glances across the country.
However, the former England international did not have it easy, as he claimed he had to tolerate some rough treatment from fellow Eagles legend Cannon, who he claimed was a "bully" and made his first couple of years in professional football "a f***ing nightmare". During one small-sided match at training, Wright said the Scottish international defender hit him with a deliberately high tackle from behind.
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While asked on Sky Bet's Stick to Football podcast about a team-mate he didn't like, Wright said: "Jim Cannon when I got into the Palace squad, he was just a bitter, cantankerous old player." He went on to add Cannon's behaviour made him "scared" and "nervous".
Wright recalled a time in training when they were playing with small-sided goals, and Cannon would stand in the goal, "spoiling the game" for everyone, as they couldn't score. He said: "There were a couple of times where I done a move on him, and then put it through his legs and it went in the goal, and I done it twice.
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"I remember the second time the lads were going 'wahey'. And as I turned around he f***ing two foot jumped me in the back. He was as bad as it gets in the dressing room." Wright added: "People don't realise how gruesome a dressing room can be, with the wrong person in there."
Cannon was a titanic figure for the Eagles. He made 680 appearances for the Londoners over the course of 15 years at the club. Wright's first three seasons were spent alongside Cannon, in what turned out to be the veteran defender's final years at Palace.
But Wright said he would always remember their time together for all the wrong reasons. He gave another example of when he was starting out as a 22-year-old pro just "months off a building site", and "hardly even knew what to order" in the club's communal eating area.
The legendary striker said: "I remember when I was ordering, he would take the f***ing p*** out of everything that I would do, 'you can't afford that', 'do you have that at home?', 'how do you say that?', 'do you know how to say that?', like [potato] dauphinoise, that kind of stuff… it made me stop going down [to eat with the other players]."
Cannon, who was pipped to Palace fans' "Player of The Century" award by Wright, has always denied being a bully. Speaking in 2017, he told The Times: "I wasn't a bully, he was just a loud-mouth upstart.
"I was an experienced centre half and I knew he was going to come up against people worse than me so I gave him a little slap one day and that was the extent of the bullying. I'm not interested in Ian Wright, he was an exceptionally good player and if he thinks I bullied him, maybe I bullied him into being a good player."
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