Jesse Lingard

 Jesse Lingard.

This is the story of Jesse Lingard. It is a sobering reminder of  where football is at the moment. It isn't a cautionary tale because we were warned this would happen to the game at some point. When Brian Clough once signed Trevor Francis as the first million pound footballer in the game, we were just dumbfounded. And by sheer coincidence we are back at the home of Nottingham Forest for this latest landmark moment in football.

Yesterday Jesse Lingard signed for Nottingham Forest after so much deliberation and thinking time that some of us believed he'd left the country for ever and would instead sign for former Manchester United team mate Wayne Rooney in his latest American project. It is hard to know how that little enterprise would have panned out because Lingard really didn't fancy a busman's holiday in the United States. Then the Saudis came calling and of course they're not short of a few bob or shillings. So after wrestling with his soul and weighing up the permutations Lingard still courted controversy.

For what now seems like a lifetime Lingard has been the subject of almost preposterous speculation about the destination of his next club. He left his boyhood club Manchester United ages ago and then promptly went on some inexplicable sabbatical, staying at United for a whole season and not sure about where on earth he could possibly go. And this is where it all gets slightly silly and unedifying. 

West Ham United, in their infinite wisdom, have been chasing Lingard's signature since seemingly the Boer War but yesterday he left most of football seething with anger and convinced more than ever that the former Manchester United pin boy was a brazen mercenary simply out for a hefty pay day at the end of his career. By the end of Thursday evening, Lingard's mind had been made up decisively. He wouldn't be joining West Ham because his wages would be chicken feed and besides how would he ever pay the bills, rent, electricity and gas? Then he told us how much he'd be getting for his next football club. 

We blinked in horror, rubbed our eyes in stunned amazement and then gasped in outrage. All the reports suggested it was something in the neighbourhood of £200,000 a week and that was with, quite possibly, add ons, bonuses and any other extra treats Nottingham Forest could offer. So it was that Lingard just upped sticks, moved quietly into a Nottingham country estate with its gated community and just grinned excitedly at the prospect of a lucrative windfall, cum National Lottery win that some of us simply shuddered at.

But here's the moment when Lingard's actions become, quite possibly, morally reprehensible. You see the problem is that Lingard, although now a free agent after his departure from United, still wanted a kings ransom to supplement the substantial income he was already receiving. He'd become a greedy guts, shamelessly acquisitive, demanding his financial rights while in the land of Tik Tok, he was still prancing around American streets, making strange hand gestures with a flash dance group and just adopting an air of sickening entitlement. Look at Lingard he's the best thing since slice bread and he'll be raking in yet more bank loads of lovely lolly. Money money money? The root of all evil? Or the road to ruination? You can be the judge of those two cliches. 

At Nottingham Forest, under their relatively new manager Steve Cooper, he will almost certainly be the highest paid player to play for the club in modern times. He'll be waltzing past defenders, showboating  with the familiar collection of flicks and tricks and running the length of the pitch to score the most heavenly of goals. When Lingard was out on loan to West Ham a couple of seasons ago, he scored a barrow load of goals and transformed the club's fortunes overnight. 

We were in the middle of the coronavirus lockdown and football was at a crossroads. It had no paying customers or fans inside the ground and West Ham had made a moderately impressive start to that season. But when Lingard became available to them, he jumped at the chance of regular first team football. So he seized the day and scored goals galore in a magical spell for the club and the club clinched Europa League by finishing sixth in the Premier League.

Naturally, heads were turned and Lingard wandered around the London Stadium with England team mate Declan Rice with the broadest of smiles. Surely this would be the precursor to a dream move to East London for Lingard. It was in the stars. For the rest of that summer, Lingard went into a kind of bewildered trance, visibly attracted by the bright lights of London but still lost in a nostalgic state of flux. Besides, Manchester United had always been his team and it just didn't seem right for him.

And so it was that Lingard, quite literally, lingered, pondered, weighed up his options, ruminating, agonising again and again before eventually West Ham ran out of  season and patience. Lingard chose eventually to remain at Old Trafford until somebody gave him the keys to a bank vault. Ralf Rangnick, United's previous manager, gave Lingard the benefit of the doubt, promised Lingard the world only to find that he was more or less surplus to requirements. Where to next for the England player? Perhaps America or even Saudi Arabia? In the end reality kicked in and perspective hit Lingard quite dramatically.

In the end it didn't really matter where he ended up since most of us had now realised that this wasn't just an end of career move with all the comfortable fixtures and fittings thrown in. For an entire summer Lingard has either been close to, in talks with, at the advanced stages of finding his new club and that would be West Ham. He'd loved his time with the club when he was out on a loan so it had to be a logical progression. Not so simple as that.  

Some of us have been unnecessarily tracking the developments of this absurdly convoluted transfer saga with eagle eyed scrutiny. Every day the theme finds another soundtrack and then another intelligent piece of  word play or grammatical variation. The longer this Whitehall farce has been drawn out the more you're inclined to think that Lingard knew his heart wasn't set on a return to West Ham. So why did he bother and, above all, why did exceptionally patient West Ham manager David Moyes give Lingard so many chances, so much room to manoeuvre, so much convincing and persuading when clearly Lingard just wanted the money and run with it all the way to Forest's City Ground?

Still, here we are literally weeks away from the most unusually early start to the football season and those whose faith in the game has been undermined by its fundamental ills will settle down once again for yet another nine months of teeth gnashing, emotional meltdown, a ludicrously mental investment in our much loved club and then the hope that the season ends up in its customary conclusion. Normally expectations are kept to a minimum but then after over 40 years of devotion to West Ham can be too trying for words.

West Ham have already invested in the Moroccan centre back Nayef Aguerd from French club Rennes, the permanent signing of goalkeeper Alfphonse Areola and the immensely promising Flynn Downes from Swansea who grew up as a West Ham supporter and does fit in nicely with the club's ambitions. But the longer you scan the pages of innumerable football transfer gossip the more you find yourself drawn into a trap of fandom and then the realisation that once the season starts it'll keep on going even when you'd rather it stop. Wow football! What a game!