PREMIER league footballers should not take their status and wealth for granted.

While their skills and talents may earn them the right to play the game at the highest level, it is ordinary members of the public who grant them prosperity.

Without supporters paying through the turnstiles, buying replica shirts or subscribing to satellite TV, the Premier League would not be the multi-million pound industry it is today.

A handful of footballers have failed to respect the source of their wealth and their privileged position. They have failed to recognise that, with the handsome rewards they receive from the sport, goes some responsibility.

We did not see responsibility from Jonathan Woodgate and Lee Bowyer when they went out for a night on the town which ended in a savage attack on an innocent young man.

We did not see responsibility from the Chelsea players who went on a drinking binge at a Heathrow hotel full of Americans waiting to return home in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11.

We did not see responsibility from Arsenal player Thierry Henry on Tuesday night when he had to be restrained from confronting a referee.

And we did not see responsibility from the West Ham player fined by his club yesterday for urinating on a nightclub bar.

While the financial rewards for footballers have never been so great, the public's respect for footballers has never been so low because of the crass, stupid and irresponsible behaviour of a tiny minority of professional footballers.

When individual players err from the bounds of reasonable behaviour, then the clubs must take swift and effective action.

Clubs need to reflect on whether employees in a factory or an office would have kept their jobs if they had done the same as the footballers in the headlines in recent times.

Sadly, because of the prosperity in modern football, players are not seen as employees, but as valuable financial commodities. Sack those found guilty of breaking the rules, and clubs write off an asset worth millions of pounds.

As long as clubs think along those lines they will drag the game further and further into disrepute.