THE transfer buy-up used to be a summer staple for sports editors. A few quid slipped to an agent got you the lot. Your pages would be first with the news of the bid, then you’d steal a march on the dance and negotiations that followed. Finally, the deal would be done and you’d get what was known as the full cough. This typically involved the player slagging off his old club or its manager and could be trumpeted exclusively across two or three pages.

Sales up, rivals stuffed, player content with his cut, agent counting his 20 per cent — everybody happy. Full coughs died a few years ago when players’ wages became so great it was no longer necessary to spill their guts for six grand. Not when a publisher could advance a hundred times that to put the same information in your autobiography in five years’ time and package it as if the enterprise was upmarket.

Now full coughs are back. Better still, they cost nothing. The only difference is, now it’s the club that dashes into print to slaughter the player.

The chairmen liked writing contracts and liked tearing them up — they just didn’t appreciate having to honour the clauses they had written. So, suddenly every departing boss had a dark secret. Joe Royle at Manchester City, David O’Leary at Leeds United, John Gregory at Derby County — all were rubbished on the way out.

The excuses varied, but the bottom line didn’t. Why should we pay compensation when he was on the take/the team were all drunk/the players hated him/the players were too close to him/the No 2 did all the work (that’s why we gave him the job for half the money his predecessor was on, a club spokesman says with a straight face)/the card school picked the team/he was in breach of con- tract for leaving his Merc in the vice-chairman’s space.

The phenomenon has now enveloped players. David Beckham’s departure from Old Trafford was a classic example — but (and it’s not often you get a chance to write this sentence) it’s Leeds who are right at the fore- front of this exciting new development.

These days, a player has to be ridden out of Elland Road on a rail. Out comes an indignant Professor John McKenzie brandishing faxes and e-mails that often seem to prove the point directly opposite to his own. He almost takes pride in the abysmal deal he has struck. In many ways, though, McKenzie is a national treasure. Fans at Luton Town, West Ham United and Arsenal must look at him and think: “Well, it’s bad — but not that bad.”

The most amusing thing about Leeds chairmen is how ungrateful they are, con- sidering the circumstances. Remember all that energy Peter Ridsdale spent rubbishing Rio Ferdinand? Yet, had he not gone to Manchester United for almost £30 million, the board would be on the game by now.

Leeds initially opened talks with Liverpool about Harry Kewell earlier this year. Yet when the inevitable happened, they wanted to blame him for their own hopeless negotiations, having agreed that huge chunks of the fee should go to a third party.

I imagine the Professor as a particularly disputatious pet-shop owner. He has puppies in the window and a sign advertising their sale for £10. A man buys one and hands McKenzie a tenner.

“I see. So that’s all you’re going to give me, then?” “But it says ten pounds.”

“Not much, though, is it?” “But it’s what you asked for.”

Eyeing puppy.

“And you, you disloyal little toerag. I can’t believe you’re walking out just like that after all I’ve done. Well good riddance. Don’t worry about us. We’ll be all right.”

Man runs out of pet shop with puppy. McKenzie throws £10 into bottomless pit, walks to the window, slashes price to £5 and puts up sign saying EVERYTHING MUST GO.

“There. They won’t take me for a ride like that again.”