The Departed

"Amongst all this directionless mess there is Scott Parker, possibly the greatest leader in the Premier League to find himself without the armband. At half time Foo Fighters’ My Hero was played out over the tannoy. Coincidence or not, it seemed a fitting paean for a player who - a move to Tottenham notwithstanding - is already assured of legendary status amongst West Ham fans."

Love In The Time Of Collison after Parker’s 100th game, November 2010

After more than 20 years of watching West Ham, Paolo Di Canio remains the player who has entertained me more than any other. As a teenager in the late nineties I played as a defender, so Rio Ferdinand will always be the player who most inspired me. But when it comes to a player who I admired the most, Scott Parker wins every time.

There has been some childish criticism of Parker over the last week, with some fans even suggesting he was overrated, standing out simply because he was surrounded by unmotivated and untalented teammates.

There is some truth in the fact that he has been surrounded by unmotivated individuals, but does that not make his own unwavering motivation all the more remarkable. Knowing that a move away from Upton Park at the end of the season was inevitable, what motivated him to deliver that half-time team talk at the Hawthorns which inspired the team to a miraculous recovery? Professionalism. Commitment. Class.

The 3-1 victory over Liverpool last season was arguably Parker’s best game for West Ham, though it was not an untypical performance. He simply ran the game. He always had that rare quality in a midfielder of being equally adept at breaking down the opposition’s attacks and creating his own.

Seeing Parker in the white of England over the last week was a helpful way to ease us in to the horror of seeing him in a Spurs shirt. Strangely, few tears were shed at the departure of the club’s best midfielder for a generation. Everyone just seemed relieved that the inevitable had not been delayed any further. The protracted Cesc Fabregas saga and the damage it has inflicted upon Arsenal is a lesson for others.

It would have been wrong to stand in Parker’s way and his destination club is ultimately irrelevant. What is completely scandalous is that we were paid just £5m.

• He is an England international
• He has four years left on his contract
• He was voted player of the year three years in a row (only Trevor Brooking has achieved this)
• He has just been voted Football Writers Player of the Year, ie the people whose work you and I read, who are paid to watch football for a living decided that last season he was better than Samir Nasri and Luka Modric

For this player, we received £5m.

When I am reminded that Liverpool paid £35m for Andy Carroll I have to stop for a few disbelieving seconds and assure myself that this actually happened. When I recall that - in a world where Jordan Henderson is worth £20m - we received just £5m for Scott Parker, I have to sit down in a dark room and reassure myself that everything will be all right.

The argument that we are saving ourselves £70,000-a-week wages is completely spurious, especially as many of those making this case were simultaneously hoping that Joey Barton would jump on board. If you think that we have been throwing £70k down the drain every week for the last four years then, yes, you should be relieved that the burden of Scott Parker is off our payroll. If you think that at market rates this was actually a good investment, then lament with me on possibly the worst piece of business this club has ever done.

The others

One of the downsides of Twitter is that, try as you might to only follow sane people, you cannot then stop those same people from retweeting the garbage of others. By ‘garbage’ I mean views that conflict with mine.

Football fans can be a sentimental bunch, but surely a line has to be drawn at shedding tears over the loss of Zavon Hines. Hines always struck me as someone who in the school playground would makes his opponents look foolish, but on a Premier League football pitch only made himself look foolish. His performance in last season’s penultimate game at Wigan was woeful. Just days after whining on Twitter about not getting a game, he missed the chance to create and score the goals to keep West Ham up.

Rumour has it that Junior Stanislas was never the nicest chap, but having never met him myself I will decline to comment. I always felt he had the potential that Hines did not, but I still do not think he was ever going to become a Premier League player. Another Jobi McAnuff, perhaps. It will be interesting to see how both players fare at Burnley.

Some fans’ sentimentality even extended as far as Pablo Barrera. There seems to be an assumption that anyone who has not played more than a handful of games for the club and thereby not had the chance to prove their worth, was ultimately destined to be the next Paolo Di Canio. Winston Reid is a good example of a player who looked poor under Avram Grant but has quickly come good under Allardyce’s tutelage. Could the same have happened to Barrera? Do we really care?

The demise of Matthew Upson will always remain a mystery to me. I loved watching Thomas Hitzlsperger but he was not here long enough to get too attached. Ditto, Demba Ba. Radoslav Kovac and Jonathan Spector have become figures of ridicule which is a tad unfair, but their departures do draw a line under four years of misery.

The loss of Parker is the one that hurts. He moves on. And so do we.