It is the news that referees and West Ham United supporters have been waiting for and this time it comes straight from the horse’s mouth. Neil Warnock, the manager everyone loves to hate, is retiring at the end of next season.

After 42 years in the game, the man who has harangued a thousand officials and rubbed just about all who meet him up the wrong way, wants to leave Crystal Palace in the summer of 2010 and move to Cornwall to spend more time with his family. “You get mellower as you get older,” Warnock said while sipping a cup of tea at Palace’s training ground in South London. “There are only two or three managers, two or three journalists and two or three chairmen I’ve got a problem with, and that’s not a bad record considering I’ve been in the game since I was 18.”

Top of the list of Warnock’s hate figures is Richard Scudamore, the chief executive of the Premier League and the man he blames for Sheffield United’s relegation from the top flight in 2007. If West Ham United had been deducted points over the Carlos Tévez affair, Warnock is convinced that he would still be a Premier League manager. “Every time I see Scudamore’s face on the television I feel sick,” Warnock, 59, said. “Lawyers want me to look into suing West Ham because nobody lost out more than me.”

Being relegated on the final day of the season hurt Warnock so much that he said he felt like cutting off his arms and legs to stop the pain. He also compared it to the death of his mother. He can remember standing outside his house in Sheffield when he was 13 and thinking, “How can God do this to me?” while his mother lay in a coffin in the front room.

Losing his mother at such a young age made him realise that life was never going to easy. His autobiography, Made in Sheffield, describes his playing career from Chesterfield to Crewe Alexandra and his life in the dugout from Gainsborough Trinity to Palace. Every chapter features a bust-up and a referee who did not know what he was doing and almost every chapter has a manager, colleague or chairman who stabbed him in the back.

Warnock laughed when Graham Poll, the referee, performed his three-card trick at the World Cup in 2006 – it was payback after Poll “robbed” Sheffield United in an FA Cup semi-final against Arsenal – and he turned his back on Gary Megson when the Bolton Wanderers manager tried to kiss and make up after a long-running feud that started during a controversial game between Sheffield United and West Bromwich Albion. “I wouldn’t shake his hands in a million years,” Warnock said. “I wouldn’t p*** on him if he was on fire.”

Poll and Megson will be glad to see the back of Warnock, but his retirement and Sir Alex Ferguson’s imminent departure from Manchester United will mark the end of the “hair-dryer” era in English football. Television cameras caught Warnock in full flow in the dressing-room at half-time during a game against Shrews-bury Town when he was managing Huddersfield Town in April 1995. With his team losing 2-0, Warnock marched into the dressing-room and headed for the showers where he held a quick inquest with his assistants. Ninety seconds later, he walked back into the dressing-room, took off his sweatshirt and laid into his players. His outburst was so ferocious that within seconds the cameraman was clearing the mist from his lens with a towel.

“Go out there and play like a f***ing Neil Warnock side and prove that we’re not as soft as s***,” Warnock told his players when he had calmed down. “Go out and give them a f***ing good hiding.”

Love him or loathe him, you have to admit that we are going to miss him when he is gone.

The world according to an outspoken man

On the global financial crisis: It’s a kick up the pants that we need but we’ve still got a great country.

On politics: I’ve always been a Tory. They’ve always had the best policies.

On Fabio Capello: I’ve been saying for two years that we should play with Emile Heskey, but I don’t have the right name for the job.

On foreign players: My philosophy is English players in an English league.

On why he is retiring: My wife won’t let me extend my contract.