Why does ashley cole get booed

Especially if they have the IQ of a meat-and-potato pie. Booing Ashley Cole, then, was a considered and even compassionate attempt to redress the balance a little, to inject some reality into his strange and rarefied life. He should consider it as a form of psychotherapy, handed out free of charge by people who had just paid three or four times the amount of their weekly shopping bill on a ticket to watch the idiot play.

There is evidence, at last, that Premier League football is reaching the end of its golden tether. Platini is accused of being anti- English because his venom has been directed, in the past, largely at Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea. Triesman has also been attacked in the British press, most usually by football experts who could happily out-Pangloss Dr Pangloss.

The disaffection or scepticism, call it what you will, in which the national team is regarded by its usually ultra-loyal supporters is, likewise, evidence of a bottom-up revolt against the way the game is. Below the Premier League a succession of clubs have traipsed towards bankruptcy and administration, strangled by their ambition to join the elite when they do not remotely have the money to do so.

Good-sized towns or cities which, in most cases, have been easily able to support a club providing it is run along the sort of economic lines that apply to the rest of the world. It is not inconceivable that this season might see the near collapse of one or two of the biggest clubs, the credit crunch having suddenly reminded their billionaire owners that a fortune can easily be wiped out overnight and that the best thing to do might be to sell up and get the hell out.

And meanwhile, in the stands, the fans who have seen their ticket prices rise exponentially year on year have decided that they have had enough. I can understand why a fan would want to boo a player; after all, it costs a fortune to get into Wembley, and conceding to Kazakhstan wouldn't amuse me, either.

This is still no excuse for what they did. Everyone makes mistakes, some bigger than others. You don't boo people who drop pens; you don't boo people who give incorrect change. Cole's mistake didn't really cause much worry; Kazakhstan were never going to score another goal. Sometimes I think Wembley resembles a zoo; whenever the "animals" do something the crowd doesn't want them too, we shout at them. The defender yesterday described this season as "his best" since joining Chelsea from Arsenal in and is hoping England fans will treat him better against Kazakhstan and Andorra next month than they did after he handed the eastern Europeans a goal at Wembley in October.

So of course it hurt, I'm not going to sit here and say it didn't. But you have to get on with it. It happens in football, you are loved one day and hated the next. You have to get on with it and that's what I've done. I've played the best I have for Chelsea so far.