Not Ashley Cole's finest hour but . . .

SOCCER ANGLES:The Chelsea left back is not the first young man to get disorientated in the fog of London fame, and he will not be the last.

VANITY FAIR magazine once drilled a hole through the reputation of a 1920s singer of torch songs, Helen Morgan – who apparently liked a drink or two – by saying: “It would be news if a piano would sit on Helen Morgan.”

As Ashley Cole was led away from a west London nightclub in the early hours of Thursday morning, thereby re-enacting a scene familiar in professional football from long before this pop-star era, the Vanity Fair remark sprang back. It would be news if a footballer wasn’t doing this.

But Ashley Cole is, in the estimation of some, notably yesterday’s Sun, front-page newsworthy. He is so because he is “Chelsea’s and England’s Ashley Cole” and because he is married to one Cheryl Cole. Cheryl is being Diana-fied for her all-round prime-time niceness and for her (also prime-time) chariddy work. “What a pair”, is a remark often made about Cheryl, and Ashley.

But is it really news? Is it new for a footballer to go out on a Wednesday night, have a few, then get annoyed by a popping flashgun and round it off by abusing the local constabulary, who of course are all fine men who abhor alcohol and swearing?

The predictable follow-up is that the player in question is then laid into by journalists and fans, who of course are all fine men who abhor alcohol and swearing. You never see an England fan drunk or disorderly. Never.

But this is the red-carpet world Ashley Cole inhabits and he should know by the age of 28 how to manoeuvre himself around it. There would appear to be a significant part of him that enjoys it, but there’s a thing called the side door, and when attractive young women are adjacent in a bar while his wife is up a mountain on another continent – and there are paparazzi around – it is probably best to swerve. Is that what John Terry, who was with him, did?

Cole is not the first young man to get disorientated in the fog of London fame, and he will not be the last. Yet there is an appetite to see Cole fall and the justification for this is his bottom-lip petulance on the pitch and his gated wealth off it. There is a clue in his mocking nickname – “Cashley”.

Financially Cole benefits from his profession spectacularly but a large part of his place in the national consciousness stems from him griping about it. It was well publicised that Cole was unhappy about the money he was being offered to sign a new contract at Arsenal – well publicised in the autobiography Cole “wrote” aged 24.

According to Cole, the €61,000 a week offer from Arsenal was “taking the piss”.

This comment launched a boatload of antagonism and sparked “Cashley”. Unsurprisingly there was an absence of sympathy for Cole. But what if Arsenal were doing as he said? He alleges that the club had agreed €66,000 a week. At the time Cole had developed into one of the best left-backs in the world who, had he been bought by Arsenal from another club, may have been offered more than €66,000 by Arsenal. That is the way of the game, Cole knew it and Arsenal knew it, it’s just that Cole said aloud what he was thinking.

If Arsenal agreed that Cole was one of the best defenders in the world, if €61,000 a week left him down the salary league at the club, as he felt, then they should have looked after him better. As it is, Arsenal got €5.5 million and William Gallas from Chelsea in return. Which is not bad.

But in a profession, and a society, where people are judged on what they earn – and footballers and their agents compare all the time – Cole is not alone. The homegrown player who comes through the ranks can generally be relied upon to be alienated by the greater wages given to a recruit, one who may lack the same sense of commitment to the club.

It’s just that along the way Cole has come to personify extravagance to the extent that he is booed by England supporters when he makes a mistake or has a poor game. This cannot be all of Cole’s making. He is not the only England player to under-perform in recent times. (And he’s not the only one booed by an increasingly intolerant crowd).

This was not Cole’s finest hour. He has been reminded of that and he has apologised for it, which is why Chelsea manager Guus Hiddink (who had that well-known recluse Romario in his charge at PSV Eindhoven) will send Cole to Coventry today in the FA Cup. But we should not forget that Cole has also had bad hours, such as in Madrid in 2004 when he was subjected to horrendous racial abuse from Spain fans in the wake of the Luis Aragones-Thierry Henry comment. In the past Cole had made the odd bad tackle but he has hardly been clattering into players the way Lee Cattermole has done for Wigan this season. On Wednesday night his behaviour was nothing like Joey Barton’s in Liverpool city centre. Unlike West Brom’s Lee Hughes, Cole hasn’t as far as we know left the scene of an accident. Ashley Cole is not Lee Bowyer.

Yes, he had a few and shouted his mouth off, and it sounds as if it was done in a don’t-you-know-who-I-am kind of way. That is off-putting but it may not be new.

Tackling the bad tackle

AS STATEMENTS of the obvious go, Arsene Wenger’s comment that Cristiano Ronaldo can be “arrogant” was up there with Craig Bellamy’s admission that he can lose his head now and again.

But that was only part of Wenger’s point about the spate of bad tackling of the sort that saw Newcastle’s Kevin Nolan almost snap Everton’s Victor Anichebe in two a fortnight ago and which saw West Ham’s Lucas Neill go over the top horribly on Lee Cattermole at Wigan on Wednesday night. Cattermole himself is no angel in this regard and Wenger’s real point beneath the diverting arrogant claim about Ronaldo was that players like him need greater protection. Too right they do.

There is an aggressive culture growing that could soon see Ronaldo felled so violently he misses not only the next few games, but he comes back different, lessened. Of course he can be arrogant and his diving is unappealing but remember the goals. You need to be fully fit to score those.

Five days to shape a season

AS ASHLEY Cole might point out quietly, Steven Gerrard is in court soon due a post-match incident in December. It was after Liverpool won 5-1 at Newcastle, where Gerrard declared this is the best Liverpool team he has played in.

Given his undisguised disdain for some of his team-mates at Middlesbrough last Saturday, one wonders if Gerrard will stick to that opinion should Real Madrid show rather more imagination at Anfield on Tuesday than in the Bernabeu 10 days ago. With a trip to Old Trafford to follow, these are five days to shape a season.