There is a good chance that by the time you read this, Dimitri Payet will no longer be a West Ham United player. Failing that, he will almost certainly be an ex-Hammer by close of business on Tuesday.

Which is a pity.

Not because I particularly want him stay with the London club – I would be perfectly happy never to watch him play again – but because I would love to see a footballer taught a lesson about respect.

I mean, going on strike and refusing to play? How conceited, egotistical and selfish can one person be?

This isn’t some poor, downtrodden worker who is slaving away in a dirty factory for minimum wage. This is a professional footballer who gets paid more than €100,000 a week for kicking a ball.

Yes he is pretty good at his job – or at least he was pretty good at his job up until the summer – but that doesn’t give him the right to dictate to his employers and insult the supporters who pay his wages.

The problem apparently started when Marseille made an offer for Payet that West Ham politely declined, partly because it undervalued the player but mostly because they need him to help turn their season around.

So he sulked, went on strike and refused to ever play for the Hammers again.

When analysing this situation let’s not forget that it was less than a year ago that Payet was overjoyed at signing a new, improved five-year contract with West Ham, the club that put a underperforming player on the big stage.

He then went away to Euro 16, played well and returned to London with delusions of grandeur: West Ham no longer felt big enough for such an accomplished talent. And with that came a coincidental collapse in his performances.

What a nasty and disloyal little man he is.

Which brings me back to my point – if there is any justice in the world then West Ham should neither sell him nor play him. They should make him spend the next six months rotting in the reserves.

Often a club can’t afford to do that with an ‘asset’, especially when transfer fees of £25 and £30 million are being talked about.

But in this case I think they can.

Payet’s value isn’t going to drop at all between now and May because of the aforementioned five-year contract. It would have been a different case entirely if he had been in the last year of his deal, but he isn’t, so his price will hold. Plus the team are actually playing better without him in the side.

On that basis, if by some miracle West Ham do stand firm it won’t cost them very much. But they would be sending out a message to all players that chucking your teddy out of the pram isn’t guaranteed to get you what you want.

And the value of that to the entire world of football would be priceless.

A badly timed blip

What on earth is going on over at Liverpool?

A little over a month ago everything was smelling of roses in the Anfield garden as they sat just a couple of points behind Chelsea at the top and a genuine title challenge seemed to be on the cards.

On top of that they had one eye on a trip to Wembley with an eminently winnable League Cup semi-final against Southampton on the horizon.

Fast-forward to last week and the wheels have come off Jurgen Klopp’s bus in disastrous fashion. A month to forget has seen them slip to fourth place, 10 points behind the leaders and they went out of the League Cup with a whimper.

If there is any justice in the world West Ham should neither sell him nor play him

Liverpool haven’t won a serious game of football in 2017. Their only victory came in the FA Cup against League Two Plymouth Argyle. And even that, as the 1-0 scoreline suggests, was hardly the resounding victory it should have been. And it came after a replay.

During this dodgy spell their defence has looked increasingly uncertain but, more worrying, the goals have all but dried up. Seven in seven games is a very worrying statistic.

I’ve heard numerous theories about what is behind this downturn in form but by far the most common excuse I have heard from the Liverpool fans I know is that the players are exhausted.

Well I’m sorry, but that is just silly.

Yes there is a certain amount of intensity to the way Klopp gets his team playing. But Tottenham Hotpur have a similarly energetic approach, plus they had Champions League games to deal with earlier in the season. And if Mauricio Pochettino’s team are tired, they are doing a bloody good job of hiding it.

I genuinely don’t believe there is one individual reason for Liverpool’s spell of poor form. It is just a combination of several things going wrong at the same time such as Philippe Coutinho getting injured, Daniel Sturridge forgetting how to play football and Sadio Mane disappearing to Africa.

Equally, I believe it is little more than a blip and things will start to click again sooner rather than later.

The sad thing for Liverpool fans is that by the time they turn this round, they will be fighting for little more than consolation prizes.

It’s best to quit while you’re ahead

It can’t be easy for Claudio Ranieri to keep picking up awards for being the greatest manager on the planet while at the same time presiding over Leicester City’s car crash of a season.

Last week the very likeable Italian added the Gianni Brera Award to his growing collection, which has seen him crowned coach of the year by the likes of Fifa, the BBC and the League Manager’s Association.

He has even been made a Grand Officer of the Italian Order of Merit – Italy’s equivalent of a knighthood – in recognition of what he achieved against the odds last season.

But while he is undoubtedly honoured by all these awards, the fact that they keep rolling in while he is embroiled in a relegation battle can’t sit comfortably with an honest man like Ranieri.

To be honest, you have to feel a bit sorry for the man. This was supposed to be his moment in the spotlight, the year when he got to bask in the glory of the greatest achievement of his long managerial career.

If Leicester had been mid-table, chugging along, nobody would have batted an eyelid. Not even the most diehard Leicester fan expected them to repeat their success.

Instead Ranieri is presiding over a disaster, which is merely serving to prove how much of a unbelievable fluke last season was.

Make no mistake, Leicester are genuine relegation contenders.

I’ve seen them a few times this season and they have generally been poor, but last Saturday against Southampton they were truly awful.

Some of that was Ranieri trying out a new formation, which was billed as ‘diamond’ but was far more ‘lump of coal’. But a lot of it was to do with the fact that players who raised their game to incredible levels last season have now rediscovered their natural levels.

Jamie Vardy, to pick an obvious example, was brilliant throughout the last campaign. This season he is a pale shadow of the man who scored 24 goals to fire his team to the top.

And he isn’t alone. Robert Huth and Wes Morgan, last season an impenetrable last line of defence, look like they have never played together before. Meanwhile, Danny Drinkwater, who forced his way into the England squad on the back of last season’s exploits, looks like a player who couldn’t force his way our of a wet paper bag.

At the beginning of the season I wondered if Ranieri might have been better quitting while he was at the top. Now I am starting to believe that would definitely have been a wise move.

As I said, he is one of the nice guys of football, and his legacy would be tarnished forever if he ended up being the first coach in Premier League history to relegate the champions.

sportscolumnist@timesofmalta.com
Twitter: @maltablade