Since there were only five other Premiership clubs playing in London over the weekend, the odds are constantly narrowing that the men's identity will be revealed. Yesterday The Sun (yet again) claimed that the eighth player - the one with whom the girl had consented to have sex when the others allegedly burst into the bedroom - plays for Chelsea. But, with every day that passes, as the media frenzy grows, fears increase that insatiable newspapers will jeopardise the prospect of a fair trial.Yesterday, one football club, Aston Villa, issued a statement declaring that none of its players was involved. The police say they are awaiting the results of forensic science tests on the hotel bedding before they even question the footballers. To cap it all, the publicist Max Clifford was reported yesterday to have become involved not, of course, to sell the girl's story but to advise and protect her from the "media scrum" developing around her family.No arrests have been made. The Sun (again) ran a front-page photo of the player, with his face obscured, leaving a London restaurant at 2.45am on the night of the incident.
He was said to have been fined £90,000 by his club and called "the village idiot" for booking the room in which the attack is claimed to have taken place - even though he wasn't there. An older player with the same club, "a world famous international", had had to be physically restrained from assaulting his accused colleagues.There were reports that one player, an England international, had an alibi in the form of another girl who would testify that at the time of the alleged attack he was engaged in a "12-hour sex romp" in another room in the hotel with her. He was thinking of putting the players up for sale in the next transfer window. He had told the footballers that any of them who were proved to have been present would have his contract terminated - with the club retaining the player's registration, stopping him playing for any other club and in effect ending his career. The club's "revered" manager took the news of the claims so badly that his colleagues feared he was having a heart attack.
His employer was also informed.Meanwhile, the reports continued. Scores of football website message boards were shut after solicitors contacted internet providers threatening injunctions if their clients' names were not erased Other sites replaced the names with asterisks. One firm of lawyers even tracked thousands of e-mails naming the men to their original source and warned the sender that he could face a libel action. The internet was abuzz with cyber-gossip on the case, some of it naming the men but much of it naming footballers who were not involved. She said she walked out of the room without saying a word when it was over, with the players' laughter ringing in her ears," the "source" was quoted as saying. The Daily Sport even went so far as to name the club for which most of the footballers play - which prompted a complaint to the Attorney General.Yet not just the conventional media was causing a headache for the footballers' lawyers. Quotes from "friends" of the victim were printed, supposedly revealing how her assailants had laughed as they held her down and called her a "slag" as they took turns to assault her "She alleges they were all over her like animals.