Ashley Cole was involved in a bitter nightclub attack with a scorned lover

The footballer was punched in the face times by a Playboy model whose twin sister Melissa he’s said to have bedded shortly after he split from Cheryl Fernandez-Versini.

Carla Howe took to Twitter to boast about the attack outside a London nightclub in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

Carla reportedly told the Daily Star: "He was trying to get up in my face, and I didn’t know what was going on.”

She added: “I was scared, so I punched him. I was wearing a ring and hit him three times in the jaw. Afterwards he was shouting ‘she’s busted my lip’."

In a tweet now deleted, she wrote: “Happy I just punched up @TheRealAC3 long awaited.”