In the court of social media, rugby stars are handed life sentences 

It is impossible to defend the behaviour of Irish rugby pair Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding. Outside a court of law, nobody should try.

The concept of innocence, however, is worth fighting for. As it is, Jackson and Olding were found not guilty of rape, but are staring at a life-altering punishment anyway. The backlash against their potential recruitment by Sale Sharks suggests they are close to unemployable right now.

Sale were forced to deny any approach to Jackson and Olding, after their interest was reported – although they dismissed speculation they were trying to sign James O’Connor and Faf de Klerk a year ago, and did the deals two months later, so make of that what you will.

Jackson’s Ulster colleague Stuart Olding was also cleared of rape charges following the trial

Yet even if we take Sale at their word, the reaction to this false alarm shows what would happen if a club did try to sign either of the players and any potential suitors will now be hastily reconsidering.

When the story broke, on Wednesday, Sale’s MP, Barbara Keeley, was immediately involved, and a petition launched opposing the deal.

Sponsors expressed concern and a pressure group, the End Violence Against Women Coalition, reiterated its view that Jackson and Olding should never play professional rugby again. Despite a unanimous verdict of not guilty.

For those unfamiliar with the case, among the sordid details of men behaving extremely badly – and then bragging about it, suggesting a behavioural pattern – was the emergence of a WhatsApp group in which the players discussed their sexual encounters with women in the crudest, most misogynistic terms.

Sluts, spit-roasting, the degrading language of male sexual conquest that helps subjugate 50 per cent of the planet. The only proper reaction is revulsion.

And if a sponsor did not want brand association with such individuals, or if supporters decided the presence of Jackson and Olding on the teamsheet compromised their love for the club, that is understandable.

Jackson, who has been capped 25 times for Ireland, is looking to try and rebuild his career

It is the point of no return that is troubling. The finality of censure – and the idea that in our modern, liberal age, a person could walk free from court, yet still receive what amounts to a life sentence.

This is not about right and wrong. We know the players were wrong. But it doesn’t make us right to become self-appointed judge and jury, rejecting an unpopular verdict.

For if Jackson and Olding are found innocent after due process yet rendered unemployable just the same, that suggests we have abandoned our belief in redemption, in change, in the capacity for personal growth and the possibility that an individual might be made to face the consequences of his or her actions and feel sorrow. Replacing this would be emotion, reaction, anger, vengeance and righteousness.

On the day the trial ended, the players spoke of regret. As a fresh storm swirled around them, they talked of shame at their actions. It has been deemed insufficient. For some, it can never be enough.

So, where does this end? It is hard to imagine the players’ destructive behaviour will continue, that their very public disgrace – and a not guilty verdict does not make their actions acceptable – has left them unenlightened. They know they have appalled a nation. They know they are held beneath contempt.

To be judged so publicly is painful and, while Jackson and Olding were considered innocent of rape, they are rightly considered guilty of shocking despicability. Their reputations are irretrievable – doubly so if any feelings of remorse are dismissed as irrelevant. We have been here before, with Ched Evans.

Even after serving his sentence, any football club that attempted to employ him faced a siege of protest.

Yet everyone who said he should not play again, from politicians to police commissioners to newspaper columnists, claimed to be big believers in the principles of rehabilitation and redemption, even while espousing views that flew in the face of both, even while wishing the lives of the convicted turned ‘to ash’.

And then Evans was found not guilty of rape, on appeal.

So perhaps it is just as well that we do not destroy lives to prove a point, that we do allow slivers of daylight, of hope, into our process, that we do have a system that seeks growth and forgiveness, not revenge and immutable sentence.

Sale’s MP, Barbara Keeley (right), started a petition launched opposing a deal with Sale Sharks

And if we do want to get biblical on those accused of rape, or any crime, shouldn’t we at least distinguish between innocent and guilty – or do our courts now play support act to the barometer of social media?

No doubt the reaction to Jackson and Olding was made worse by a not guilty verdict.

They are not seen to have paid a price, as even Evans did. They are considered to have behaved appallingly and got away scot free.

Yet, with the shaming fury of modern public life, that is not the case.

The two players know how the wider world sees them and must live with it. This is their sentence, even when walking free.

What happens from here concerns us, not them.

Our belief in the judicial system; our acceptance that not every verdict will chime with popular opinion; our understanding that a civilised society grants individuals the power to repent and modify.

And that the concepts of justice and fairness, guilt and innocence, regret and redemption are more than hashtags or slogans on billboards, and cannot be collected or dropped, as is the fashion.

No Chelsea blues for Brendan 

Limited opportunities for loan signing Charly Musonda at Celtic are said to have damaged Brendan Rodgers’ standing at Chelsea. Rodgers signed Musonda on an 18-month deal in January, but Chelsea are upset he has started just two games since then. It is said Rodgers may have hurt his chances of one day becoming Chelsea manager. As the club has not employed a British coach throughout Roman Abramovich’s 15 years in charge, he must be terrified by this news. 

Brendan Rodgers has gone down in Chelsea’s estimations for not starting Charly Musonda

Why the surprise at Crystal Palace’s revival under Roy Hodgson? In English domestic football he has always done excellent jobs at mid-size clubs, undemanding of success. He exceeded all expectations at Fulham, reaching a European final, and kept West Brom comfortably mid-table – how they would settle for that now. England was different, because tournament impact is expected, and Hodgson was seen as unadventurous. Crystal Palace was a great opportunity for him, however. He has delivered marvellously and will continue to do well there. 

Will Gunners gamble on a myth? 

When Georginio Wijnaldum scored in Rome he ran straight to a figure on the Liverpool bench.

Andreas Kornmayer is the Liverpool fitness coach who has been picking up many of the duties of Zeljko Buvac, who surprisingly stood down as Klopp’s assistant – maybe for good.

It is doubtful Wijnaldum was making a political point but clearly he credits Kornmayer with something.

Meanwhile, a newspaper in Bosnia – the same one that first reported Klopp and Buvac’s appointment at Anfield in detail – are saying Liverpool’s No 2 is lined up as the next Arsenal manager. There is some logic to this, and not just the reliable Bosnian source.

Georginio Wijnaldum ran straight over to the Liverpool dugout after scoring against Roma

Arsenal’s new head of recruitment is Sven Mislintat, formerly of Borussia Dortmund, who has spent a lot of time getting the band back together, as the Blues Brothers had it.

Henrik Mkhitaryan and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang were both with Mislintat – and Klopp and Buvac – at Dortmund. Buvac will be well known to him, too.

Maybe a whiff of Arsenal-related disloyalty is what caused the sudden fracture in Buvac’s long-standing relationship with Klopp. It would be considered very poor form to be distracted by Arsenal with Liverpool motoring towards the Champions League final.

Maybe, too, Mislintat has bought into one of football’s favourite mythologies – the No 2 as the real brains of the operation. Colin Harvey and Howard Kendall at Everton. Ray Harford and Kenny Dalglish at Blackburn.

‘What have you learned from Carlo Ancelotti?’ Paul Clement was once asked. ‘Maybe Carlo’s learned something from me,’ he replied.

Liverpool No 2 Zeljko Buvac (left, pictured with Jurgen Klopp) has been linked with Arsenal job

Although as Ancelotti had won two Champions Leagues, Serie A, the Club World Cup, two UEFA Super Cups, the Coppa Italia and Supercoppa Italiana before meeting Clement at Chelsea, maybe just stick with the question as asked?

Even Peter Taylor, who was plainly a giant part of the success of Derby County and Nottingham Forest, was never the same away from Brian Clough. No 1 is No 1 for a reason.

Buvac’s brain may be enviable, but his front-of-house experience amounts to three years with SC Neukirchen in Germany’s tier three, one of which ended in relegation to tier four.

That does not mean he is a bad manager, but it does explain why his relationship with Klopp developed as it did.

The Liverpool manager has always insisted on giving credit to his staff but is undoubtedly the main man. If Arsenal have been persuaded otherwise, they are taking a huge gamble.

Programme is over unless clubs get back to basics 

Much nostalgia this week over the demise of matchday programmes. The Football League will discuss whether to allow clubs to stop publishing them next season.

As ever, the ‘proliferation of digital and social media’ is to blame. Fans get their information from different sources these days.

They can read the manager’s notes on their smartphone. Twitter tells them the teams. Programme sales have been in decline for years. Yet anyone who has collected them from decades past, or has a stash from previous generations gathering dust in the attic, will know the real reason programmes have become insignificant. They all look the same. No personality. No individuality. The same showy production values, the same appearance, the same design. Too big, too bulky, too bland.

It didn’t used to be that way. Derby produced one the size of a newspaper in the Seventies, West Ham’s was small and could fit in a back pocket. The wealthy clubs, Arsenal and Chelsea, went for more expensive paper, even in the days of black and white. Yet the character of each club was on every page.

Gradually, that changed. Programmes became matchday magazines – verbose, overstuffed and cumbersome. Insipid features, sponsors’ plugs and padding, when all anyone wants to know is who’s playing.

A lot of the old programmes were glorified team-sheets, no more than four pages. The predicted teams were on the back and because they were mostly printed on ordinary paper, the fans could note the changes in pen or pencil. Try to get a biro to write on these modern, glossy efforts.

It’s not as if fans are in the ground hours before kick-off these days anyway. They don’t need 68 pages of puff to keep them amused.

If clubs went back to the old days – basic look, basic information, sold cheaply and easily stored, programmes might be of interest again. Digital didn’t kill them, uniformity did. Your club, all clubs, are meant to be different.

Football League clubs will vote on being able to choose to print the publications this summer

If Moyes plays safe again he risks disaster

Saturday sees the biggest match of David Moyes’s season, and his approach to West Ham’s most winnable remaining game may define his future there.

So, will Moyes send out his team to play Leicester as they are now or the Leicester of two seasons ago? Will his priority be to take the game to a team most recently beaten 5-0 at Crystal Palace, or will he seek to contain Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez as if they were still driving the champions?

West Ham’s owners want to give Moyes the job full time, but his popularity beyond the boardroom is on the wane.

A world-class team in a world-class stadium was the promise, and Moyes’s instinctive caution does not sit well with that.

In recent weeks, he has set up West Ham to play the best possible version of the opposition – creative players omitted, Marko Arnautovic a lonely, frustrated figure leading the front line.

David Moyes knows he needs a result against Leicester to aid West Ham’s survival hopes

At Arsenal, West Ham played as if facing a top-four side, not one struggling to keep ahead of Burnley. At home last month they set up for the upwardly mobile Stoke of several seasons ago, not a team facing relegation under Paul Lambert.

West Ham have been sucked back towards the bottom three and face a tricky conclusion to the season with Manchester United and Everton at their volatile new home.

Their one good break is that Leicester away is no longer such a daunting trip. After four wins in 18 games under Claude Puel, the Foxes board is readying to sack a third manager in little more than a year and the players are, once again, dissatisfied with their boss.

As Claudio Ranieri discovered, they are an ungrateful lot, even towards miracle workers.

Had they been guests at the wedding where Jesus turned water into wine, they would have been at the back grumbling about the absence of a cocktail bar, and Puel is the latest victim.

It is a familiar litany of whines: don’t like the training, changes the team too much, too distant, no rapport. Leaving aside that they had a manager with a fantastic personality and got him the bullet within months of the greatest title win in history, there has never been a better time to visit Leicester.

However, it needs a manager who believes that, who can harness West Ham’s potential going forward, and use it to record the win that will, in all likelihood, see them to safety.

If Moyes is cautious, it could be disastrous.

West Ham have conceded more goals than any team in the Premier League this season, suggesting a defence-minded strategy is a dismal option. It has, however, been Moyes’ default position for some time, which could explain why West Ham are stumbling towards a cliff edge.

Wherever they end up next season, Saturday’s game could decide whether he really is the man for this job.