GILLINGHAM football player Marlon King has been cleared of assaulting a police officer.

The 22-year-old striker, who had denied attacking plain-clothed PC Mark Searle with a glass bottle outside a London nightclub, was acquitted at the Inner London Crown Court.

The £5 million-rated star, who lives at Forest Hill in London, had pleaded not guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

The prosecution had alleged that the player had assaulted the officer during a fracas outside a nightclub in Streatham, south-west London, last September.