What’s The Matter With … Peter Odemwingie’s idiocy?

The good deals and bad deals of the January transfer window will all become clear in the coming weeks but, even if QPR end up getting relegated – which is priced at 1/2 with Ladbrokes – after splurging £12.5m on Chris Samba, there’s no way Harry Redknapp will look as big an idiot as Peter Odemwingie.

The West Brom striker turned up at Loftus Road unannounced hoping his club would be able to thrash out a deal with the R’s before the deadline passed. However, this wasn’t to be the case and, after bidding his Baggies teammates adieu, the Nigerian international must resume his duties in the Black Country but a day later.

Unimaginably, this probably wasn’t the most embarrassing aspect of the whole debacle. He managed to make an even bigger fool of himself by conducting an interview live on Sky in which he was referring to QPR, who still hadn’t so much has had an offer accepted for him, as ‘we’ and ‘our’ when he discussed their chances of beating the drop.

You pile this farce on top of the pathetic Twitter outbursts that he thought might coerce the West Brom hierarchy into lowering their demands for him and you’re looking at the embodiment of everything that’s wrong with the modern day footballer.

There’s never been a case of someone so desperate to leave a club that’s on course to finish in the top half of the Premier League to one that stands a better chance of going down than staying up.

Clearly, Odemwingie has seen the sort of money that QPR are handing out to those willing to join their fight to beat the drop and dollar signs flashed up where his pupils should’ve been.

Redknapp can count missing out on the 31-year-old’s signature a blessing in disguise. He had absolutely no interest in whether QPR stayed up or not, he just wanted the big pay packet, as if West Brom had him working for a milkman’s salary. That’s not the sort of mentality that’s needed in a relegation scrap, or for any good cause for that matter.

Ladbrokes have a special of 5/6 that he Tweets he’s sorry to the West Brom fans at some point. Given that a grovelling apology is in order this could well occur, though only after he’s lumped a boatload of cash on it himself.

So, regarding the initial question of what’s the matter with Peter Odemwingie? The answer is simple: he’s a mercenary.

All odds and markets accurate as of publication’s time and date