James Lawton: Now is the time for game's authorities to act

There is no question about it now. English football is in danger of dying of public disgust and ridicule.

Of course it wouldn't happen overnight. There would be a year or two more of the posturing and the arrogance and the avoidance of the issue that characterises official reaction to each new outrage. But the seeds of destruction are surely being thrown. The authorities simply have to act before it is too late.

It is time now to cut through all the legal jargon and the euphemisms and get right down to the reality of it.

This is that the image of professional football is touching bottom, and this can be said with or without reference to the fact that three Leicester City players just happened to be in a Spanish jail this morning awaiting trial for what is described as "sexual aggression'', which could amount to rape.

Whatever the outcome of these proceedings, we know that Frank Sinclair, Paul Dickov and Keith Gillespie have joined the ever-growing list of extravagantly rewarded players who have dragged the name of the game which lavishly rewards them into the dirt.

We don't have to discuss the charges placed before the court. We merely have to talk about the shameless dereliction of professional responsibilities that led to reports of drunkenness by these players late in the La Manga resort hotel.

Leicester City players, at great expense to a club fighting for its life in the Premiership after already controversially emerging from a period of financial administration, were on a break from the tensions and the pressure of a failing campaign.

But instead of gathering themselves for a last push against an unpromising fate they went on a drinking spree. This is behaviour that seems incredibly irresponsible in the wake of all the damage to the reputation of football that has been suffered lately.

What the Professional Football Association surely has to do as a matter of urgency is to hold up their hands and say that it is time for accountability, time to spell out what is acceptable behaviour from young men who, at least in financial terms, sometimes seem to have inherited the world.

Will the PFA do this? There has not been too much encouragement in recent months.

Not when Rio Ferdinand was defined as a martyr when he was dropped from the England team for failing to take a drugs test, the most basic responsibility of a professional athlete.

Not when Gary Neville, a leading light among PFA members who attempted to organise a strike of England players during the Ferdinand affair, writes in a leading broadsheet newspaper that he had no regrets after being dismissed from the field - for diving and head-butting.

The PFA will no doubt say that the majority of its members are aware of their responsibilities, that it is only a rogue minority that give the game such an atrocious image.

But that is no longer good enough.

The incidents of breakdown in discipline are just too frequent now, too relentless, and with them comes a depressing sense that so many footballers believe they are answerable to no one but themselves.

They have to face up to the fact that as a trade union and as some of the most pampered members of society. They are only as strong as their weakest links.

What happened in Spain these last few days in some cases will probably amount, in the last analysis, to personal tragedy. But beyond the damage to individual lives, there is a larger problem.

It is that unless firm action is now taken by the authorities, unless so much more is asked of players as individuals and of the body representing the national game, the future can only be bleak.

It is time for some bitter truths to be driven home.