The judge in the trial of
two Leeds United footballers said today "legitimate questions" hung over the players' accounts of the night an Asian student was battered unconscious.
Judge David Poole, nearing the end of his summing-up speech after the seven-week trial of Jonathan Woodgate, Lee Bowyer and two others for serious assault, said the jury should consider if another gang could feasibly have attacked Sarfraz Najeib.
He also said Woodgate, his two friends and a third player, Michael Duberry should be cleared of a conspiracy charge if the jury believed their story that - they changed clothes later that night because they were stained with vomit not blood.
Poole ran through the key chunks of evidence before telling the jury he would send them out to consider their verdict on Wednesday morning.
Woodgate, Bowyer, Paul Clifford and Neale Caveney all deny chasing Sarfraz Najeib, knocking him unconscious and then kicking, punching, stamping on and biting his lifeless body as he lay in the street.