It seems as though The Independent’s James Lawton has snapped this morning. Fed up with players pretending that money is not a motivation for their summer transfer maneuvers, he ponders the problems afflicting football on Saturday morning.

It does not make pretty reading, with Joe Cole and James Milner in the firing line of the respected columnist.

“One problem with being led about by agents who attach a lead to the ring in your nose is that you don't get much time to look around and see the effects of such relentlessly prosecuted greed. It is something that footballers like Joe Cole and James Milner in particular and the Premier League in general really ought to consider.

“This week, at a time when confidence in the buoyancy of the national game, even its ability to recognise some of its problems, is probably at an all-time low, the neglect of such reflection has created public relations from hell.

“Joe Cole arrived at Anfield announcing he had signed for Liverpool not because they had come up with the best terms – which would have been fair enough in any open market – but because they were still the biggest club in England and that by joining them he was enhancing his chances of fulfilling some higher career destiny.

“Meanwhile, James Milner was insisting through third parties that he never asked to leave his most loyal fans at Villa Park, a statement flatly contradicted by Aston Villa manager Martin O'Neill's report of a meeting with the player and his agent.

“Cole and Milner and their agents should do everyone a service. They should not quite so crassly insult all those who still retain a flicker of interest in the prospects of the new season – and a league which has fallen back so drastically in its ranking as the powerhouse of the European club game and whose short-sighted policies are now so widely, and so incontrovertibly, linked with the embarrassing failure of English football to even brush the surface of competition at the World Cup.

“Pile their snouts into the trough, if they like, but do not seek to preserve the facade of shirt-kissing commitment to anything much else but the numbers on next month's pay-slip. “