Ashley Cole: Reply To 'Open Letter'

Well to say the response to the original article stunned me is an understatement. In all honesty I thought there was a chance that with the hundreds of articles around about the whole sorry affair it would just get lost in the crush, but these fears appear to have been ungrounded. I'd like to thank all the people that took the trouble to contact me both via the article and personally, and apologise if there's any I didn't manage to answer.

So what happened next? Well due to the interest the piece created and the fact that I was quite willing to give Cole and his people a chance to reply I decided to do what I could to ensure he (at least) was aware of it. So copies of the letter were emailed directly to Jonathan Barnett's company Steller for his attention, and to an email address that I'm led to believe is used by Cole (although to be fair I don't know for certain that it is so bear that in mind). As there was no reply (not even acknowledgement of receipt) from either on Friday morning I sent a copy to the Press Office at Highbury asking for any comments the club might like to make.

Within a couple of hours I had an email back from Arsenal. Or two to be precise. The first was a little strange, having a copy of my mail and a note asking if I'd like to comment (made out to someone else!?!). The second (that followed shortly after) had an apology for sending the first to me, when it was intended to go to his PA at his management company. This mail also included the following statement from Arsenal Football Club:

"As a Club, our position is that we would like Ashley to remain an Arsenal player."

Well that was around Friday lunchtime, and with it being a Friday I was not expecting anything else to happen before the weekend, and I wasn't disappointed.

Then at the weekend there was the story from Private Eye that's been doing the rounds. If you haven't seen it, basically Cole appears to have asked for the Observer to provide a suit when he went to the photo shoot that accompanied (another) interview. After the photo shoot he wanted to keep the suit. I know some people have given that as another example of him being 'money grabbing' and such like, but let's be honest here. It's pretty standard to try and blag clothes from photo shoots, and I'd probably have done the same given half the chance! Slightly embarrassing that Private Eye noticed he was wearing a 'Make Poverty History' band with his (blagged) £1000 suit though ...

Also at the weekend I decided to e-mail the lady at Arsenal back. I was polite, asking if I could quote the above from the first email, and asking them to let me know if there was going to be any comment from Cole or his people.

Monday lunchtime I check my emails and there's a reply from Arsenal. It included the full statement the club issued after the enquiry and said I was free to quote any or all of it. Also asked me if I'd had my reply yet. Maybe it was just me but it seemed that she had expected me to have received a reply. But I hadn't.

So I emailed back and said as much (politely again) and asked if I should expect a reply. No answer. Emailed her again on Thursday. No answer. And that's where we are. Nowhere.

Personal opinion. I think when they read the original piece and were told how much interest there had been (I've even had a couple of other sites try to tap me up!) they genuinely expected to be able to get an answer from Cole's people. Then at some point someone decided it wasn't the way to go and I was blanked. What does that mean? Well it could mean that the relationship between Arsenal and Cole has completely broken down, or just as easily that everyone wants to make it up and are keeping their heads down. If this was a tabloid I'd probably have decided on one view or other and tilted this whole piece that way, but I'm not so you can make up your own mind.

So did I achieve anything? Well, I didn't get the answer I was after.

But maybe we did achieve something. A lot of you wanted Cole to read the letter because you felt the same way about large parts (or all) of it. You wanted, for once, that a footballer should really know how you feel. Well whilst I can't absolutely guarantee that he's read it personally, at least we know his PA has.

And I don't think it's unfair to assume that he probably has as well.

And his reply has been ... silence.

But Ashley, it's never too late to get in touch ...

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