Cole gun saga highlights the flaws in modern game

THE hardest question Carlo Ancelotti had to face as he desperately attempted to defend Ashley Cole’s shooting of a work experience boy with an air rifle — and his own decision not to sack him — came when he was asked: What action would the club have taken if it had been a member of staff firing at a player?

For a minute the enquiry stumped him; he knew, surely beyond all doubt, the answer was the culprit would have been sacked, banished from Cobham and never seen again And yet Cole, far from suffering a similar fate, will be rewarded with a guaranteed place against Manchester United in tonight’s make-or-break Premier League game at Stamford Bridge.

That is modern football for you; one rule for us, one rule for them.

And it encapsulates why so many supporters have become distanced from their heroes who no longer live by the same codes or restrictions that govern the rest of us.

To say Cole deserves to be jettisoned and see his career destroyed because of a prank that went terribly wrong is, of course, ludicrous in itself; despite Chelsea’s silence on the subject he is unlikely to be the only player involved and sources suggest the gun did not belong to him in the first place.

But the harsh reality is anyone else who was guilty of a similar mistake in the ‘normal world’ would suffer a much worse fate than to see two weeks wages disappearing out of their account. So no wonder Ancelotti was briefly flummoxed by that killer question.

“The club would use the same action, I think,” he said sheepishly, and ultimately unconvincingly, as he processed the facts.

“Look, it’s not about player power. Ashley has character, but he has no power. The mistake was that the gun was here in Cobham. We didn’t know the gun was here. But who hasn’t made a mistake in his life? Who? Maybe God.

“To read that Cobham is out of control is totally wrong. I’ve been a manager for 20 years and one of the most important things is discipline. To have that you have to observe the rules. One player, Ashley, made a mistake. When he said sorry he was really disappointed. What do we have to do now? Kill him? No.

“We are not happy because he stepped over the line, but we have to support him. Things are not out of control and it’s not true there’s a lack of discipline here. You can judge the players on the pitch, and they show fair play, respect for the referees, respect for the fans. This is what we have to judge, not other things.”

Unfortunately for Ancelotti, not everyone agrees — and increasingly the outside world is beginning to ask why football should be treated differently as if exists outside the boundaries of natural justice.

That change in attitude has been of benefit to players at times; they have earned greater contractual freedom thanks to EU regulations and are no longer subject to football’s bizarre self-written employment law that made slaves of footballers in the past.

But they cannot have it both ways; if football is to be treated the same as any other job then players must surely live by common-sense boundaries respected by almost everyone else in society.

On the way to Cobham yesterday a Ferrari passed by, driven at break-neck speed towards Chelsea’s training ground, and it proved an apt precursor to a press conference about Cole, who not so long ago was clocked at 100mph and charged by police to join a long list of footballers who clearly believe the rules of the road were written for someone else.

Take into account, too, John Terry’s guided tours of Cobham for cash — which made the headlines last year — the same player’s lurid love life (not to mention that of Cole) and stories of petulant behaviour across the board and it’s clear something is amiss.

It would be foolish to think Chelsea are the only culprits however. The front-page tales of over-aggressive and drunken players in nightclubs, of sordid sex parties, of dogging, of roasting and of expensive lawyers hired to impose super-injunctions tells a different story. And that is why Cole will escape with his career intact.

“He will play against United,” said Ancelotti. “Is he in the right frame of mind? I think so. Obviously we’re not happy with what happened, but I have spoken with him. He said sorry, he made a mistake, it was an accident. So he will play and he’s focused to play a good game. He made a mistake and knows this. Now we have to move on.”

Whether Chelsea can do so remains to be seen because this latest episode could not have come at a worse time, just when things seemed to be picking up on the pitch and ahead of such a big match.

The internal strife caused by Terry’s off-field behaviour last year, then again by the sacking of Ray Wilkins and also by Didier Drogba’s regular bouts of petulance means Chelsea’s famed team spirit is, although still intact, far more brittle than in the past; and this is another serious test of its durability. He may have escaped consequences off the pitch then, but Ashley Cole may find, after all, natural justice catches up with him on it.