Which is tragic when you consider he is one of our greatest players (up there with Harry Kewell, Mark Viduka and Mark Schwarzer) and arguably our most effective ever player. He’s still the only Australian striker all but guaranteed to get us a goal if we need one.

But Timmy, great as you are, that does not give you right to crap on the A-League by telling the English media you were just going through the motions. And for someone who uses the word respect so frequently it’s a tad ironic, because if you were not giving 100 per cent it means you didn’t respect the league, the club and the coach.

Either he doesn’t understand the word or thinks it applies only to him.

Some people might still fly to his rescue and say: "He’s right. The A-League isn’t as good as the Championship."

But so what? The A-League was paying his wages and part of the deal was surely that he bring to the league some of the passion and professionalism that made him what he was in England – the home of football.

The really troubling thing is not whether he’s telling the truth about his own training attitude at a club he didn’t respect…it’s more the fact that he was willing to say so to the English media. Did he not know it would get back to Australia or did he simply not care?

I’m not sure which is worse, but it tells you something that many have suspected about him for a long time: a person who grew up in Australia would never have said those words (not to the media at any rate).

Could it be that Timmy didn’t spend enough time in Australia as a young man learning Aussie style and soaking up our culture? Footballers have always been popular but something happened in England in the 90s that took it down a dark path.

Footballers became so famous and so well paid that they became part of the different moral universe which had previously been the preserve solely of rock stars and Hollywood.

This different moral universe is a place where everyone is so self-centred and arrogant that those become the ethical underpinnings of existence. Normal relationships for example are almost impossible – partly because of the endless media scrutiny and constant temptations being thrown in their paths – but mainly because of the egocentric filter through which such uber-celebrities see the world. It owes them a living and the munchkins don’t matter.

This is the world Timmy joined as a 16-year-old in England and I say it’s affected him. He still clearly has great love and respect for his family, but his words and actions (sometimes) convey little respect for the wider Australian community.

I don’t just mean this latest incident – there have been plenty of previous occasions when he’s dropped clangers about the quality of the A-League or insufficient Vision etc. A person who’d spent enough time sucking up Aussie style before going overseas would never have said those things.

The timing was weird also. He says he’s gone looking for game time to ensure he’s on the plane to Russia, and one day after the new coach is unveiled at a press conference (at which he appeared not to endorse Timmy’s selection when given the opportunity) Timmy says something to make the coach question his training attitude and impact on the team.

And on top of that, half the footballing community in Australia will be saying: "Don’t pick him. We don’t care about the goals, we don’t care about the years of service…not if he doesn’t respect our league."

I have some sympathy for how he was forced out of Melbourne City (the circumstances of which I’ve promised not to disclose) but he’s definitely his own worst enemy sometimes. And I say that as a person who has always defended him in the past when people complain that he’s arrogant.

He’s making it hard for anyone to defend him, which is very sad, because his contribution to Australian football has been massive. His exploits deserve to go down in legend but he risks tainting his Legacy if he’s remembered as much for his thoughtless words as for his goals.

Adrian’s latest book The Fighting Man is in the shops right now or available through Booktopia. Adrian also wrote Mr Cleansheets.