WHERE will your favourite player end up, do you reckon, once the transfer season starts? He’ll almost certainly leave your club, unless you’re a Manchester United or Chelsea supporter. First-team players last an average of 18 months at any one place these days and the good ones get the hell out even more rapidly. Not for the money, of course. It’s usually because of a point of principle.

Take the case of Thierry Henry, arguably the finest player to have graced the Premiership in the past 10 years. He may soon be va-va-voooming off to Barcelona or Milan – again, on a point of principle.

“Everyone knows that a lot of stuff has happened at the club that wasn’t supposed to happen. So the only thing I can tell you is right now I am an Arsenal player, but I cannot deny it’s nice to hear about Milan . . .” he announced, with skilfully concocted Gallic sadness.

So, let’s be clear – it’s all that David Dein business that is driving Thierry away. But my guess is that his discomfort at Arsenal’s internal upheaval may well be assuaged by the delivery to his front door of a very large sack of wonga. Every man has his price and Henry’s has just gone up a bit, now that his contract is due for renewal. The money – if any is available – may well provide him with all the consolation he needs to get over Dein’s departure and he won’t leave for Milan after all. There was a plaintive whine on one of the Arsenal internet fan sites as Henry’s possible transfer was discussed: “He wouldn’t do that to the Arsenal fans he loves,” one supporter, who is presumably a rather clingy four-year-old, put it.

In fairness to the Arsenal supporter, the toddler mentality persists at pretty much every club up and down the land. “Byfield won’t leave Millwall, he’s ’Wall through and through,” I read on my own club’s fan site this last week as our favourite player was the subject of the usual dispiriting rumours that almost always result in our most accomplished players, our only hopes, departing for a sum of money which will be used for absolutely any purpose on earth other than strengthening the team.

No, mate; Darren Byfield, excellent though he is, is not Millwall through and through – he’s been there for a year and has been yearning to leave for half of that time. He’s about as Millwall through and through as Albert Schweitzer or Kylie Minogue. Nobody is anything through and through any more, apart from themselves. The notion of an emotional or – yay – even spiritual attachment to a club has long departed.

There are no more Terry Paines, Bobby Charltons, Willie Maddrens. The players at your club whom you fondly consider “loyal” because they’ve been there, plugging away, since Michael Howard was leader of the Conservative party are, in fact, players nobody else would touch with a bargepole. The reason they haven’t left is because they’re not wanted.

Footballers didn’t used to kiss their club badge upon scoring a goal because we already knew they were with us, were on our side. With a few exceptions (David Beckham certainly and maybe one or two others), today’s players don’t even have an emotional or spiritual attachment to their national side. David Bentley has been rightly reviled for pulling out of the England Under21 setup because he’s feeling a bit on the knackered side, bless him. Never pick him again at any level, would be my response, with no reprieve and no appeal.

But is there a decent reason why Paul Scholes – arguably the best midfielder in the Premiership last year – should escape censure for absenting himself from the England side, solely to concentrate on prolonging his more lucrative club career? Should we have been so understanding of Alan Shearer, when he announced he was no longer available for international matches?

If your country needs you, it needs you – regardless of the fact that it may all be a bit bothersome, travelling to ghastly places such as Moldova and pulling on that England jersey, and maybe having to share a room with Rio Ferdinand or Ashley Cole.

Meanwhile, Mark Viduka – that personification of the modern club player, a remarkably skilful individual who chooses to put himself out and run about a bit only when faced with the sort of opposition he believes to be commensurate with his immense talents – is on his way to that Theatre of Perpetually Buggered Dreams, St James’ Park. Where he will be enjoined by Sam Allardyce to form a striking partnership with that other mercenary Obafemi Martins. A partnership: now let’s think about that for a moment. Have either of these players, throughout their careers, been able to form successful partnerships with anyone other than their accountants? Or shown the slightest wish so to do? There is no great surprise or displeasure among the Boro fans at the departure of the great Australian pie-bucket, despite the fact that he scored a lot of goals for them last time out and their side will probably struggle next season and be fortunate to stay up, in the end.

At least, with Mark Viduka, you cannot even kid yourself about such stuff as loyalty; he has never remotely pretended to have any.