PROLIFIC or problematic?

Leon Knight has been described as both in recent years as the reputation of Darlington’s new striker suffered while his career drifted off course.

So off course, in fact, that within the last 18 months he has endured short-lived spells at a minor Greek team called Thrasivoulos Filis as well Scottish clubs Queen of the South and Hamilton Academical.

Such a downfall must have been hard to bear having come through the ranks at Chelsea and once been a regular goalscorer in League One with comparatively bigger clubs Huddersfield, Brighton and Swansea.

It was in 2006 when he left Brighton, after a reported falling out with the manager, Mark McGhee, that Knight, rightly or wrongly, became tagged as a troublemaker which, to some, is how the 28- year-old remains portrayed.

A further nine clubs since Brighton does little to suggest otherwise.

But at Darlington, his 14th different club, Knight is bidding to re-ignite his career and manager Mark Cooper feels he can handle any offthe- field issues.

“He can be as bad as he wants as long as he scores goals,” quipped Cooper when Knight arrived for a trial that this week saw the forward join the club for the rest of the season.

Knight is in the squad that has travelled to Bath City for today’s game and will be on the bench at Twerton Park assuming international clearance, required due to his spell in Scotland, is received in time.

Cooper has admitted the forward is not yet fully fit. The manager said: “He’s scored a lot of goals wherever he’s been, so his scoring record is not in question.

“The only thing that’s an issue for some people is the off-field stuff, but I haven’t got a problem with that. I’m confident I can deal with that and get him scoring goals for the club.

“You take people in life as you find them, don’t you? I’m not going to judge him on what other people have said about him, I’m going to take him on face value and for me he starts here with a clean slate.

“I’m sure I’ve got enough man-management skills to get the best out of him.

“He’s got on well with everyone here and what’s helped is that he already knows four or five of the lads because he’s played with them before.

“I don’t see him as a problem and I’d rather be talking about what he does on the pitch and hopefully that is going to be scoring goals for us.”

Knight fired Brighton to promotion from League One in 2003-04, bagging 27 goals, including the winner from the penalty spot in front of 65,000 during a play-off final at the Millennium Stadium.

His stay at Swansea lasted only a year and, after meandering from club to club, in 2008 he dropped into the Blue Square Premier for the first time when signing for Rushden but that stay also ended in acrimony.

Rushden sacked him after only four months, explaining “continuous breaches of the club’s code of conduct” which were understood to include turning up late for both training and games.

Cooper added: “There are talented people who have not fulfilled their potential in every walk of life. I’ve got to get as much out of him as I can.

“You’d have to ask him if he sees it as a last chance. From my point of view I want to bring good players to the club, he knows this division after playing at Rushden – and the levels about – and there were a few clubs chasing him.

“He’s only 28 so he may be thinking ‘I’ve got four or five years left in me, I’ve got to do as much as I can to squeeze a living out of the game’.

“He came up here for a couple of days for training, he saw the way we do things and then watched the game last Saturday and I think he thought that with the way we play he might score a few goals.

“If we can continue to get as many balls into the opposition penalty areas as we have been then someone is going to score a lot of goals. Whether that’s Leon Knight or somebody else, I don’t mind who it is.

“Having seen what I’ve seen in training, I’m sure he’s got enough about him to make a difference.”