While, at 31, Ince must obviously take responsibility for his own actions, he is by no means the only one to blame as soccer lurches from one disciplinary crisis to another.

There are other culprits - not least Liverpool boss Roy Evans and England coach Glenn Hoddle.

Yes, Evans - the mild-mannered, thoroughly decent joint manager at Anfield who blindly claimed the FA were conducting a vendetta against Ince when they launched an inquiry into his V-sign disgrace.

"We are sick to death of it," Evans said then. "Okay, he got sent off, but only for playing in a competitive manner. Ince is Ince. That's the type of player he is. If he wasn't doing that for us we would want to know why."

Ince is Ince - just as the Krays were the Krays, Crippen was Crippen and Clinton is Clinton. What a way to explain away recurring wrong-doing.

Ince's upbringing has often been put forward to explain the smouldering anger which undoubtedly still exists beneath his competitive nature - and there is some truth in the argument.

His railwayman father left home before Ince was three; his mother deserted him at the age of eight. It may not be surprising then that, after moving in with an aunt in Dagenham, he grew up on the streets of east London with qualifications in truancy, knuckle-fights and not much else.

Many of his friends were drug pushers and thugs, and a life of crime and prison loomed until he joined West Ham and was saved by the iron discipline of Hammers boss John Lyall.

"I was a tearaway when I left school, always in trouble and too arrogant to think authority would ever touch me," Ince has admitted.

Fifteen years later and he is still proving that you can take Ince out of the streets but you can't take the streets out of Ince.

Now, Ince is at the crossroads. He must choose whether he goes down in soccer history as a thug or one of the most inspirational midfielders and leaders England has produced.