Soccer:Wigan chairman Dave Whelan said Marlon King will never play for the club again after he was jailed for 18 months today. The striker was found guilty of sexual assault and actual bodily harm over an incident in a London nightclub, which occurred in December while he was on loan at Hull.

King spent a subsequent spell on loan at Middlesbrough before returning to the  Latics in the summer, but he will now be left without a club after a mandatory notice period, believed to be 14 days, has expired.

Whelan said: “We have to follow the rules and regulations, which means we will have to give him 14 days notice that his contract will be cancelled.

“He is absolutely sacked - we will not tolerate football players who get sent to jail for 18 months. As far as we are concerned, he is finished with football at Wigan Athletic.”

The striker, 29, who was celebrating both his wife's pregnancy and scoring a winning goal hours earlier, was repeatedly "cold-shouldered" by women revellers in London's packed Soho Revue Bar last December.

When a slightly-built 20-year-old university student became the latest to recoil from his touch, he lost his temper and in an outburst of "completely gratuitous violence" lashed out, "smashing" her to the floor and broke her nose.

His single clenched fist blow was so powerful that two others - one of them holding onto his arm - were also sent flying.

While bouncers moved in to restrain the striker, friends rushed to the aid of his victim.

As she was helped to her feet, blood poured from her shattered nose, London's Southwark Crown Court heard.

King claimed he was a victim of "mistaken identity" but after hearing overwhelming evidence from a string of witnesses, including a football coach who insisted he was the assailant, the jury decided King was lying.