Do Chelsea have such contempt for their neighbours and for the league in which they play that they think their money can buy them out of any illegality, or are we simply too quick to point the finger at them in every argument? Late yesterday afternoon, while we were still absorbing the unprecedented Premier League release of every dot and comma of the allegations in the Ashley Cole affair, Tottenham Hotspur released a brief statement. It said that Chelsea had made an approach to sporting director Frank Arnesen "in direct breach of the FA Premier League rules". And Tottenham had suspended Arnesen for speaking to Chelsea without permission, in contravention of his contract.
Cole is, perhaps soon was, the pride of the Arsenal faithful. He is the only Englishman to come through the ranks at Highbury to play among the foreigners who so stylishly re-wrote the record books of our national sport. Nurtured by the club from the age of nine, spoken for by the same agent from the day he was eligible to sign a professional contract at 16, he is England's outstanding left-back.
Sadly, once you read the nauseating extracts on these pages from the FA Premier League disciplinary commission, you might wonder if anybody involved in his career cares about Cole the player rather than Cole the commodity. Through the fog of lies, betrayal and avarice, you might conclude that either Cole and his agent tried to sell him to Chelsea, or that Peter Kenyon, Jose Mourinho and company went along to try to destabilise their rivals .
But rather than admire Cole or sympathise with him, he emerges at best as a multi- millionaire led by greed or gullibility into becoming a symbol for disloyalty and disrespect that riddles what some of us still call a game. It is not, of course, a game at the level at which Arsenal and particularly Chelsea now play. Business has contaminated it, and the lawyers crowding on to the pavement at Marble Arch, where the verdict was handed down, left little doubt that they will use Cole, if he lets them, to carry this case all the way to the human rights courts.
Quite why the Premier League published the damning 24-page deliberation of retired judge Sir Philip Otton and his panel only they know. The judge will address a conference this month on the need for transparency from sporting authorities, but the disclosure here is of such corrosive nature that the Premier League is now eating itself alive. Not even Sir Philip knows the whole truth of what he was told. For example, Patrick Vieira denies the allegation that he sent a text message to Cole telling him not to settle his pay demands for less than £80,000 a week.