Ear-biter jailed for bottle smash attack at Wembley Stadium League Cup final

An ear-biting football fan has been jailed for smashing a bottle over a man’s head at a League Cup final game at Wembley Stadium.

Barry Ansell, 37, knocked his victim to the floor and then continued to bash him over the head in the attack on March 1 last year at the stadium in Engineer’s Way, Wembley, while on licence from prison for stabbing a woman in a row over her dog.

He was jailed for four years yesterday at Southwark Crown Court.

Ansell has a string of convictions for violent attacks, several of which reveal a tendency for biting his victims, the court was told.

In January 2002, he bit a man’s ear off after he lost several games of pool.

Three years later, he struck again, bitting the top of his victim’s ear off in a scrap outside a bar. He was said to have thrown the ear back at his victim, shouting: “Here, have your ****ing ear back.”

Judge Joanne Evans said yesterday: “You have an extensive and continued record of violence from 1990 and continuing until your arrest for this offence.

“The victim describes at least two blows to the back of the head and then a number of blows were sustained while he was on the floor.”

The attack after Chelsea’s 2-0 win over Tottenham Hotspur was caught on CCTV. He had been released on licence from prison, where he had been serving a four-year sentence for a stabbing in 2012.

Sentencing wheelchair-bound Ansell for wounding without intent, Judge Evans asked him: “Could you stand up please?”

“I wish I could,” he replied.

Ansell, of Harlow, Essex, was ordered to pay a £120 victim surcharge on top of his jail sentence.