I left Aston Villa and got hit with a stupid £10,000 bill

Footballers don't tend to like airing their dirty laundry in public - but that's never been a problem for Paul Merson.

The former Aston Villa favourite has come clean about a costly promise he made when he left Villa Park in 2002.

Merson's next port of call was Portsmouth and the second tier South Coast club didn't offer the kind of mod cons he had been used to at Villa. After endearing himself to the claret and blue faithful from 1998, Merson soon became equally popular at Pompey, although it was something of a culture shock during his early days at Fratton Park.

READ MORE:Adidas to release another Aston Villa kit this season as exciting FA Cup claim made

READ MORE:Gary Lineker labels rule ‘bonkers’ after Aston Villa twice denied at Liverpool

READ | Kamara starts, Onana returns: Aston Villa starting XI vs Liverpool predicted

READ | Chris Sutton shares 'worrying' concerns over jaded Aston Villa's wobble

So much so that an expensive pledge he made to the Portsmouth kitman soon came back to haunt him.

"I've signed for Portsmouth and I've come from Villa," Merson told the BBC Sounds Sacked in the Morning show on Radio Scotland.

"Villa's an unbelievable football club. It doesn't get the recognition for the size of the club, it's a massive football club. I loved it at Villa, I probably played my best football at Villa over a consistent amount of time.

"So I go into the dressing room at Portsmouth after training one day, I take my kit off and I throw it on the floor in the middle of the dressing room.

"At Arsenal and Villa and places like that they wash your kit. You turn up the next day and all your kit's hanging up or rolled up in a towel ready for training again.

"I throw my kit on the floor and all the lads start laughing. I said what are laughing at? They said we clean our own kit here.

"I said, we're a Championship team, what do you mean we clean our own kit? So straight away I'm thinking what have I done here?"

Thankfully for Merson one of his new team-mates had a suggestion for how he could shirk his laundry duties, only for his cunning variation on the plan to spectacularly backfire.

"One of the lads has gone, the kitman will clean it for you for 30 quid a month or 30 quid a week, something like that," he added.

"I was on a big bonus if we got promoted. I thought I'd try to be funny so I said I'll tell you what, clean my kit for nothing and at the end of the season if we get promoted I'll give you 10 grand.

"We only went and got promoted and I had to give him 10 grand! Portsmouth had finished bottom six for the last 10 years and we went and won the league!

"He went to me, I can't have cash can I? I had to meet him at the service station to give him 10 grand for cleaning my kit."