Chaps, just leave the abuse and the mockery to the real experts – us, the fans.

Actually I've been meaning to dump you for ages.

I never really fancied you.

And you're frigid.

However hurt and rejected you feel, there are some things you just shouldn't say at the end of a relationship.

However justified you feel, you're the one who ends up looking small.

Better by far to retain some dignity by smiling and displaying as much magnanimity as you can muster.

By and large, the football world manages to abide by this. Managerial sackings are said to be 'by mutual consent', with any bitterness (in public, at least) further assuaged by a large financial settlement.

Players are wished well for the future, whatever their failings may have been.

'He has been 100 per cent professional since I came here,' said Peter Grant on the release of Paul McVeigh, choosing to overlook the latter's less than sensible sending-off against Cardiff last October. (His reaction at the time: 'Paul has let us down badly and I'm not pleased about it at all'.)

'I think he has been terrific since he came here, absolutely brilliant,' said Grant when Carl Robinson moved to Toronto, choosing to overlook?Oh, OK, I'll be charitable too and not speak ill of the departed.

Recently, though, I've noticed a few breaches of this unspoken code of conduct.

The ever-charming Simon Jordan marked Iain Dowie's departure from Crystal Palace with a writ (successful, as it turned out) and followed it up with this character reference in an interview with FHM:

'?I hated our manager at the time [the 2004 play-off final]. I didn't like him at all. His manners, outlook and attitude stank. And I told him so, after we won the play-off final. So what if he got promotion? That's what I paid him to do.'

Here's Bolton chairman Phil Gartside talking about Sam Allardyce shortly after he left the club in April:

'You take a key man out of a team but you replace him with someone who is even better. That's where I am at. I have known Sammy [Lee] a long time. He is a good coach with great contacts. If you look at his credentials to what Sam's were when he joined they are better. It is a better job today and I am not sure you would have given it to Sam Allardyce now.'

Er ? isn't the Bolton job only a bigger and better job now because Allardyce made it bigger and better?

And while I am no fan of Neil Warnock, I am not sure he deserved the parting shot he received from Sheffield United chairman Kevin McCabe:

'Hindsight is a great thing? We can reflect now maybe Neil Warnock wasn't quite right for our Premiership ambitions. But he gave it his all.'

Ungracious and ungrateful, when you consider how far Colin had taken the club.

Real Madrid's president Ramon Calderon didn't even wait for David Beckham to be out of the door when the latter signed his deal with LA Galaxy in January:

'He is going to be a half-baked actor living in Hollywood. The decision by our coaching staff not to have him continue here has been ratified by all other coaches in the world because nobody, despite the fact that he was on a free, wanted him.'

Doesn't that sound just like a jilted lover shouting, 'No one else will want you, you trollop…' when they say they are leaving?

Of course, as we now know, Beckham turned the situation around in such an extraordinary fashion that Calderon was left clinging to his ankles pleading, 'No, don't go, I still love you?'

Our final example comes from Arsenal, where chairman Peter Hill-Wood responded to Thierry Henry's farewell tribute to the club and explanation of his decision to leave thus:

'We certainly don't think Thierry Henry going and Arsene Wenger's contract situation are in any way linked. That was just an excuse.'

Was dignity and decorum left behind with the marble halls when the club moved from Highbury?

Why this change in behaviour has occurred is unclear ? to me, at least.

Sir Alex Ferguson recently put forward the theory, when talking about criticism aimed at Steve McLaren, that a general rise in the level of abuse might be the fault of TV programmes like the X-Factor:

'We have a mocking situation in this country now? You see it in all these TV shows where the panellists criticise the contestants. It is a mocking culture.'

While Simon Cowell may be held accountable for many evils ? Robson and Jerome, Five and Westlife to name a few ? I'm not sure he can be held fully responsible for this.

Perhaps society is simply becoming coarser ? or less constrained by old conventions, if you prefer a less disapproving slant on it. Perhaps the explosion of bluntly-stated personal opinions on phone-in shows and message boards has something to do with it.

Or maybe it's all the fault of the evil media (boo, hiss), who seize on any injudicious remark and turn it into a big story.

Whatever the case, clubs really would do better to stick to the usual polite, if anodyne, expressions when someone leaves.

Forthright opinions are best left to the experts: the fans.

Having said all that, there's part of me that would like to see what Freddy Shepherd has to say if Michael Owen leaves Newcastle this summer?

And finally? Ipswich chairman David Sheepshanks has dismissed reports that porn baron and Birmingham City owner David Sullivan is interested in buying Ipswich Town.

(Incidentally, does a porn baron have a baronial coat of arms? That might be an interesting sight.)

I'm in two minds about the possibility myself. As a City fan, I obviously don't want to see anyone coming along to improve the financial position at Portman Road.

But as a columnist, I can't help rubbing my hands (and nothing but my hands, you understand) with glee at the prospect of an unlimited supply of material.