Frustration, inaction and the God complex are a powerful mix...

A LITTLE under two months ago, just after football ground to a halt, I voiced my concern that many players would become coiled springs without matches.

In most jobs, people are ready to relax by the end of the week and Friday evening can’t come quickly enough.

But football is different – players spend all week building up to explode at the weekend when they can share their gifts with the world.

I worried straight away that, without the release they get from playing in front of huge crowds, some would struggle.

And barely a week has gone by since then in which we haven’t heard of a player transgressing.

I don’t say any of this to excuse the sort of behaviour we have heard about from Jack Grealish, Kyle Walker, Alexandre Lacazette, Moise Kean or Morgan Gibbs-white and others since the coronavirus pandemic started to wreak its havoc.

But to explain it as a reality of what can happen when the God complex, disposable income, athleticism and testosterone many players have is mixed with boredom.

From as young as eight, the best are told in their academies that they will go on to play for Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Tottenham, England, whoever.

And when they eventually break into the first team even more smoke gets blown up their backsides.

First it’s bank managers telling you how great you are, then people in petrol stations or supermarkets and when you walk into a nightclub and girls start fawning over you and fellas want to buy you a drink, human nature dictates that eventually you start to believe the hype.

I made a call last week and, at the end of it, the man I was talking to said, ‘Sorry, I don’t mean to sound unprofessional, but are you Stan

Collymore?’

When I said, ‘Yes’, he replied, ‘Oh, man, I’m a massive

Liverpool fan and blah, blah, blah’.

Now, if I’m getting that sort of treatment at 49 then imagine how often the lads still playing are getting it.

It’s not just the public but parents as well. All of a sudden, the people who were supposed to keep you on the straight and narrow are beholden to you. That only adds to a sense of, ‘Well, what’s the worst that could happen if I do this or that?’ that creeps into players’ minds.

I was in a supermarket over the weekend and I heard a respectable-looking couple in their 40s telling a friend they had lifted a fence panel and gone into their neighbour’s garden for a birthday party last week.

These sorts of things will be happening all over the country but it’s not just the neighbours tempting players to flout the rules, it will be some of the best-looking girls on TV messaging them and asking if they want to party.

Of course, they could and should say, ‘No’.

People are right to say, ‘Well, if the rest of us aren’t allowed to go to parties then why should they be?’

I agree.

But when fame, fortune and adulation collide for you at a young age it is easy to think you’re different and a bit special.

FLOUTING THE RULES Kean, Gibbs-white, Lacazette and Walker have all been in lockdown trouble