Manchester City footballer Yaya Toure escapes driving ban after speeding offence

Manchester City star Yaya Toure has escaped a driving ban with magistrates handing him six penalty points after he admitted speeding up to 101mph on a motorway in a turbo-charged Porsche.

The 32-year-old Ivory Coast international, from Cheshire, was recorded driving at excessive speed on a northbound stretch of the M6 near Keele services on May 20.

Toure had been expected to turn up for what was due to be his trial at Burton Magistrates Court in Staffordshire, having denied a more serious allegation of speeding during the same incident at a previous hearing.

However that charge was dropped by prosecutors, and Toure was instead represented in court by his solicitor Gwyn Lewis who told magistrates the footballer "apologised for his behaviour".

Mr Lewis, in mitigation, said: "The car comes from Germany, has a German registration, rather than a normal registration and unfortunately for my client it was a vehicle which had I think not got the correct speedometer - it was showing kilometres (per hour) in terms of miles.

"That isn't other than a point of interest. He knew he was going too fast."

The midfielder, who earns a reported £220,000-a-week from the Premier League side, had already accepted breaking the 70mph speed limit on a previous occasion.

He was fined £1,665 and ordered to pay £85 costs, a £120 victim surcharge and a criminal court charge of £150.

Mr Lewis said his client, from Wilmslow, had been recorded speeding by an unmarked police car between junction 15 and junction 16 of the motorway at about 8.30pm and "accepted responsibility for it straight away".

He added: "Can I say there is, in any system, a degree of human error that can take place and it could have been up to 3mph less, or possibly more, but it's around or about 100mph and we don't dispute that."

Toure's solicitor said the speed meant his client was "on the cusp of disqualification" but asked magistrates to impose points.

"My submission is that you want to slow this driver down and the best way to do that is the imposition of points," he added.

Turning to the fine the magistrates could levy on his client, Mr Lewis explained: "You may or may not know he's a professional footballer and in that regard he's well paid in what he does.

"I haven't filled in a means form, but what you can say is there's sufficient means to pay even at the maximum level of the fine."

He concluded by saying: "May I take this opportunity, as my client has directed me, to apologise for his behaviour.

"He shouldn't have driven this fast.

"It's out of character for him, he was involved in a short degree of speeding and can I ask for him to be dealt with as anybody else would be: with a fine and six points."

Lesley Gilman, chairman of the bench, said: "We've thought carefully about this.

"We've heard the gentleman has a clean licence and we are not going to disqualify him today but will impose six penalty points on his licence."

Before today's hearing Toure had denied an additional allegation he was speeding at up to 123mph on the same stretch of motorway just a few minutes later.

However the charge was dropped by prosecutors before the hearing.