Jermaine Pennant, Stoke's former wild boy resuscitated career with help of a counsellor

It was in April that Jermaine Pennant sought help. After a third drink driving ban the previous year and an eight-week suspended?

Prison sentence that represented the "lowest point in my life", and with his career at Stoke City coming to a demoralising end, he decided to speak to Catherine, a therapist used by the club.

For seven intense weeks, Pennant talked. "I said to her: 'I've made a lot of mistakes, why do I take so many risks?'?" he explains.

"Not just with football but in everything - with my partner, with life, with this and that. You know, just making bad decisions.

"We went over my childhood, growing up - from an infant to now basically. It opened my eyes to certain things and made me realise why I had made certain mistakes and why I had gone down certain paths."

Even so, it was to be Pennant's last season at Stoke. Manager Tony Pulis had told the Premier League club not to offer him a new contract - his deal expired at the end of July - and although Pennant was subsequently replaced by Mark Hughes, there was no guarantee of a lifeline.

Hughes knew about Pennant, had heard the stories, the wasted opportunities and second and third chances, but wanted to hear it from the man himself.

"I wanted to stay here but under the old regime it wasn't going to happen," Pennant says ahead of the Premier League meeting with Norwich City today.

"I would have left, without a shadow of a doubt but the new manager came in and we talked and he just wanted to know, to hear from me, what had happened in the past.

We went through it and he just said: 'That was not with me. You have talent, you are a good player,' which was what I wanted to hear.

"The club have been fantastic. They could easily have agreed with Tony Pulis and said: 'Yeah, we will call it a day'.

In their eyes they are probably thinking they are taking a risk because they are a business as well so they don't want to pay that money to someone who is not worth it."

That is why Pennant was offered only a one-year deal, which he readily accepted. But then he is no longer a kid.

Now 30, Pennant has spent half his life in the spotlight - from when Arsenal decided to pay pounds 2?million for him, making him Britain's most expensive teenager.

"From 15 I have always been in the public eye," he says. "And I have found it hard, maybe unfair at times, but it's life. I've retaliated and sometimes it's led to other things.

Maybe I've got angry but I've gradually learnt how to deal with it, got used to it." There have been many mistakes, including 31 days in prison after his first drink-driving offence, but it is hard not to conclude that a childhood spent in poverty on Nottingham's notorious Meadows Estate and marred by tragedy - his mother died from cancer when he was three, also had a profound effect.

"To get from there to where I am now is still an achievement," Pennant says.

"I've never been the perfect professional - the James Milner-type.

"I'm not like that and I certainly don't mean that as a lack of respect to James but he's probably had a very different upbringing.

That's how people sometimes make choices in their lives through their childhood and do it without realising."

There are regrets but he has also fallen victim to his own reputation. Take the story, originally published by the Spanish newspaper Marca in 2010, that he somehow 'forgot' he owned a Porsche car and left it at a railway station in Zaragoza for five months, accumulating eye-watering parking fines in the process.

Pennant knew the question was coming. So was the story true? "It was transfer deadline day, and Zaragoza called me and said they had a loan offer from Stoke," he says.

"I had to be in England by 5pm so I rushed to the train station to get a train to the airport and then fly to Manchester. So then I'm over here, signing the papers, finding somewhere to stay, staying over here for a couple of weeks to find my feet. I didn't really get the days off under the last gaffer!"

The car stayed at the station for three weeks until Pennant got a friend to collect it and pay the fine. And that was it. "It was blown out of all proportion but it's difficult to lose a bad reputation," he admits.

"You always have that about you so that the first thing that comes up is 'ah, him'."

Pennant was in Spain having joined Real Zaragoza on a free transfer from Liverpool.

He is still the only Englishman to feature in a Champions League final - in 2007 against Milan - without then playing for his country. At that time the winger was flying but then he was struck by injury, a double-hernia and a stress fracture to his right tibia, and his demons returned.

"I rushed back but I wasn't fully ready and I just could not get back into his [manager Rafael Benitez's] plans and from there I started to get a bit wobbly," Pennant says.

"I was finding it hard to take, asking myself: 'Why am I not playing, I'm better than him and him.'

"You have to be very, very mentally strong and, at the time, I wasn't. I was naive, young. And that's when the wheels starting falling off. It was a shock to my system. It wasn't Liverpool's fault."

Now he has a second chance at Stoke, who are going through their own rapid transition with a more expansive playing style under Hughes. "It's put a smile back on our faces," Pennant admits.

"It's what we all wanted, really, especially with the squad we have got. We all feel we should have been doing this sort of stuff before. Now we are allowed to express ourselves."

Not that he is attacking Pulis. "Every manager has got ideas of his own, a style they want to play and he just felt that was defensively good, a good shape," Pennant says.

"His idea was maybe firstly not to lose, to be solid. Now maybe it's: 'Go out and win.' So it's a different approach.

"We are trying to take control of the game, have more possession. It's like we have got 11 different players out there. But it's virtually the same squad."

Pennant has, mostly, been a substitute but his outlook now is very different. "If it's not broke, don't fix it," he says.

"But I will keep trying to force my way in and, hopefully, if he [Hughes] does want to change it then he will bring me in.

"Hopefully I've still got more than a few years left in the top flight. I want to achieve whatever I can with Stoke and wherever that?takes me and to put everything right."