Am I the only person to understand the reality of why the crowd started booing Ashley Cole on Saturday? It can be explained in four simple words.
Everybody hates Ashley Cole.
OK, so it's possible a few Chelsea fans don't, although I'd hazard a guess most of them do as well. Certainly pretty much everybody else does. If it's not the tawdry way he left Arsenal, bemoaning his plight only earning however many tens of thousands a week it was (which while making him no better or worse than hundreds of other footballers didn't exactly endear him to those of us who earn less in a year than he did every few days), there's the on-field petulance, the self-important autobiography, and for most red-blooded men the inexplicable cheating on his not unattractive wife. This is a man who seems to live by the mantra "I've got it all, but I want more". Little wonder, then, that given the opportunity to vent their resentment, disapproval and, yes, jealousy, thousands of England fans watching their team labour to victory over a thoroughly inexperienced side ranked 120 places below them took it in spades. They weren't booing the pass. They weren't booing the performance. They were booing the man.
Then again, maybe it's just me. I'm often astonished that there are people in the world who don't consider Robbie Savage to be the footballing devil incarnate.
