RAHEEM Sterling wasn’t at Arsenal for long enough to become a club legend, and, to be frank, he wasn’t good enough.

It almost seemed weird seeing him in the red and white during a miserable loan spell, having previously been such a tormentor in City blue. Perhaps he was the last dodgy signing before Arsenal dispensed with deadline day panics in the post-Edu era.

And so it’s likely few people have much sympathy for Sterling this week after he pleaded guilty to dangerous driving on the day he crashed his Lamborghini – amid reports he was impaired by inhaling what the newspapers like to call “hippy crack” balloons.

One, because from all the reports of his motorway madness he truly could have killed someone and, two, because he has a Lamborghini and nearly everybody reading this doesn’t.

Footballers who have been able to amass great riches over their careers are already considered fair game for public judgment and ridicule even before they’ve sprinkled a lay-by with broken glass and bent car metal.

That all said, did we really need to see the footage of a police officer presumably pretending they didn’t know who they were about to nick, and the penny dropping behind Sterling’s stunned eyes that these bad times for him were about to take another bum turn? Hundreds of thousands of people have now watched the slow click of the handcuffs on the roadside.

A criminal conviction and a possible prison sentence might seem to be enough punishment in itself, but no – out comes the bodycam as well to ensure that this image of him at his worst will follow him around as much as the pictures at his medal-winning best. It’ll do wonders for rehabilitation.

There’s the thin argument that the release of the footage will somehow act as a deterrent to others, but if somebody is suffering from a substance addiction – Sterling conceded he had a problem with balloons – then they are probably going to do mad, thoughtless things anyway.

In reality – and call me a sceptic – that bodycam video, with its pillory public humiliation, was an obvious ratings winner that the CPS and others just couldn’t resist the temptation to share.