One of the lessons the boys club not learnt has been the continual promotion of people like Ben, who are also people like them, as the archetype footballer. The privately educated, well spoken, well groomed, from a 'good' family set of characteristics are highly sought after for new recruits. It's created a bit of a monoculture in the league, and narrowed the pool of talent, despite plenty of people like Ben demonstrating that those things are superficial and don't have much bearing on character.
Ben got a lot of free passes because the people in charge of things couldn't accept that they could be wrong so about how to judge someone's character. They still can't.