Claims of rape stemming from parties involving professional footballers are nothing new but none has yet resulted in a conviction.

Win, lose or draw, England’s top players and their hangers on can often be found downing £500 bottles of champagne accompanied by attractive young women at the trendiest nightclubs and hotel bars in London and Manchester.

Many football clubs are so concerned about the claims of sexual impropriety that they are providing lessons on socially acceptable behaviour and the law of rape and indecent assault.

But there has been frequent gossip about a darker side to the players’ exploits and several police investigations into allegations of serious sexual offences. The most notorious allegation was made in October 2005 when two Premiership players were interviewed over claims by a 17-year-old girl that eight men assaulted her, in a so-called roasting, at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London. The Crown Prosecution Service decided that there was insufficient evidence for the men to be charged.

Just weeks earlier the Manchester United star Cristiano Ronaldo voluntarily attended a police station to answer questions about allegations made after a night he spent with a woman at his suite at the Sanderson Hotel in Central London.

Ronaldo insisted that the sex was consensual. It was later revealed that the “victim” was a £200-a-night prostitute who, friends claimed, had made false allegations against the player after he refused to pay for sex.

In 2004 three Leicester City players faced accusations of sexually assaulting three women while at a training camp in Spain.

Paul Dickov, Frank Sinclair and Keith Gillespie spent six nights in jail but all charges were dropped. In December 2003 the Leeds United player Jody Morris and a friend appeared in court accused of raping a 20-year-old woman whom they had meet in a Leeds bar. In January 2004 the Crown Prosecution Service announced that it was dropping the charges against both men.

In May 2003 two Premiership footballers were named in evidence in the trial of a rapist convicted of attacking a woman in Leeds. The victim also told Leeds Crown Court that she had been indecently assaulted by Michael Duberry and then threatened by the England star Rio Ferdinand. Both players denied the allegations put to them in court and no charges were brought against either player.

Robin van Persie, the Arsenal and Holland forward, was held in jail for two weeks in Rotterdam in June 2005 after being accused of raping a young model. The public prosecutor found that there was no case to answer. Van Persie said: “I have two sisters and a wife. Do you think I can do such things to another woman?”