With words such as "lie", "slur" and "libel" peppering the Teesside air, Paul Merson yesterday left Middlesbrough for Aston Villa for £6.75 million. A further £250,000 may be paid by Villa, depending on Merson's appearances, meaning Middlesbrough may make a profit of £2.5 million on a 30-year-old they bought from Arsenal 14 months ago. Merson has agreed a four-year contract but was signed too late to make his Villa debut against Newcastle tonight.
Those details, however, almost became an irrelevance yesterday as Middlesbrough, in the shape of their manager Bryan Robson and chief executive Keith Lamb, launched a vitriolic attack on Merson and his agent Steve Kutner.
The reason for the acrimony was a series of statements made by Merson directly, and indirectly through friends, in which he questioned Middlesbrough's ambition and the players' attitudes towards alcohol and gambling. Merson's problems with both of those are well known.
After the problems with and subsequent departures of Fabrizio Ravanelli, Emerson and Juninho, Middlesbrough have been outraged by Merson's comments, and Lamb said: "Everyone connected with Middlesbrough has been let down by Paul Merson: the fans, the players, his friends.
"Paul Merson knew how the club had been treated by other international players and when he came here he went on record saying that he would never treat the club that way. He has just treated the club in exactly the same way and I hope he treats his new club better.
"If he takes a moment to reflect, I hope he will remember how everybody bent over backwards to accommodate him and his family's particular problems, how the club baby-sat his children.
"If this is his way of repaying us I find it strange, and to say the club lacks ambition is a nonsense. We've built a new stadium, a new training ground and Bryan has spent over £50 million on players - all in the last four years.
"And to say his fellow players are drinkers and gamblers is a slur and a libel. All the other players at the club are suffering because of this and people will read his comments and again be calling Middlesbrough a Mickey Mouse club."
As if his initial tirade was not sufficient, Lamb added: "To say Paul Merson was driven out is a lie."
Robson by comparison was restrained, but he pointed to the timing of Merson's public comment on Friday morning and to the fact that he received a telephone call from Villa's manager John Gregory at 8.15 a.m. that day. "I told him Paul was not for sale," he said.
The next call Robson took from Gregory was on Saturday night at the Wales v Italy match, but he did not want to speak to Gregory until he had seen Merson. A meeting had been arranged for 9.0 on Monday morning.
At this stage matters become blurred. Merson said Middlesbrough cancelled the meeting, but Lamb insisted that was untrue.
Whatever the timetable of events, by Monday night Robson felt he had "no choice but to sell Paul".
Merson stuck to his story at Villa Park yesterday, where he insisted he had been concerned he would fall back into bad habits if he remained at Middlesbrough.
After signing a contract with a salary of around £20,000 a week, the forward said it was Middlesbrough's decision to sell him: "Problems were arising with my past addictions and I was looking for a more stable environment. I was getting on towards cracking up and things were beginning to get out of proportion.
"The past 12 months have been very up and down for me. It was a roller-coaster year. Now I need stability, and I am sure I will get that by coming to Aston Villa."
Merson added that Robson had wanted to sell him to Tottenham but he had not wanted to go there. If Villa had not come in for him, he said, he would have stayed at the Riverside.
The intricacies of the transfer aside, Middlesbrough's bitterness stems from the special treatment they had afforded Merson. He had been allowed to retain Hertfordshire as his family base, to return late from the World Cup and to have longer breaks than the rest of the squad. That friendship and loyalty, Robson feels, has been abused.
