At least there's Leighton Baines. Good old Leighton Baines, still doing the right things, quietly going about his business, despite having known for pretty much the entire summer he has the chance to go to Manchester United but Everton are doing all they can to put the shutters down. No complaining, no scams, no injuries of convenience, even though it is probably safe to assume he is quite intrigued by the idea of joining David Moyes and everything that comes with the upgrade.

There's an element of educated guesswork here, on the basis that Baines has kept his feelings to himself, but he could hardly not be interested when Old Trafford presents so many attractions. A huge jump in salary is only one of them.

A move to Manchester means playing in the Champions League, challenging for trophies and working, again, for a manager who clearly gets the best out of him. It also offers a much better chance of ousting Ashley Cole from the England team on a permanent basis, with a World Cup to come next summer.

Yet he has not forced the issue. He does not have a team of people working in the shadows to put pressure on Everton, planting stories, kicking up a stink. Baines has just carried on as he was: head down, working hard, reminding us it is possible to be a great footballer and a great football man. It is a different set of principles he is applying to some of his peers, absolutely refusing to take on his own club when you just know there will be people in his profession looking his way and wondering why on earth he is being so old-fashioned and naive.

Robbie Savage blew whatever remained of their cover with his handy 11-point guide, published under the title "Footballers' Tricks to Engineer a Transfer" on the BBC website and well worth a read if you want a crash course in the kind of professional spin, bluff and counter-bluff that has been served up this summer. The different headings — Sulk, Stop Communicating, Fake Injury, Use the Media and Undermine the Manager and the like – will give you a pretty good idea about what to expect. You may not be keen on Savage, and you may not like what he writes, but I actually quite appreciate a bit of truth‑telling. It is the system that stinks.

Gareth Bale, like Baines, has not said anything this summer. That, however, is where the similarities end. Bale, we are told, is "distraught" and "horrified" he is still waiting for Tottenham to accept Real Madrid's gold.

Spurs claim he has a genuine injury, while various newspapers have been informed he is not particularly interested in playing anyway and already thinking about Tottenham in the past tense.

All we can say for certain is that he will not play before the transfer window closes. He has a "pain in his foot," according to André Villas-Boas, and "doesn't speak".

Bale is learning Spanish and his agent, Jonathan Barnett, suddenly appears to have Marca TV on speed-dial. Put it all together and it is not difficult to see what is going on. In fact, it is about as transparent as it gets.

This, increasingly, seems to be the modern-day strategy when a player wants to get his own way: back the club into a corner, then sit tight, play a clever game with the media and hope the chairman eventually caves in.

Baines stands out simply because he does not go in for all the politics and games. But the fact he is the exception, rather than the norm, probably does not say a great deal for footballers at this level. Or the people waiting for their five or 10% commission and telling their clients what to do next.

Wayne Rooney is a case in point. His agent, Paul Stretford, to use Sir Alex Ferguson's description, is "not the most popular man" at Old Trafford.

Yet Rooney sometimes appears to be in thrall of him. "It's like dad and son," as someone closely involved put it a few days ago. "It's nothing like the usual player and agent relationship." And Stretford, for the most part, is clearly used to getting his own way.

He is not someone I know well but I have been flicking through Stan Collymore's autobiography over the past few days and it offers his own insight into what it is like being a Stretford client. Published in 2004, shortly after Rooney moved to United, it also has some advice for the teenager. "I hope Rooney knows what kind of animal Stretford is," he writes. "I hope he doesn't fall for all the emotional shit."

Collymore remembers Stretford going from being "a thorough, professional, understated guy to this horrible parody of an agent", wearing a long Gucci coat and sunglasses and christened, behind his back, as "Toad" by the player's mates, because he reminded them of the character from The Wind in the Willows. That may sound fairly inconsequential. Yet Collymore also came to think of himself as "a doormat" as far as Stretford was concerned and, explaining why he eventually severed all ties, depicts him as a deeply manipulative character. "I had always done whatever he said. I said yes to all sorts of things, often without looking at them. I allowed the line between him being my surrogate father and my agent to become blurred. And he played on that big-time. He abused it. My relationship with him was unhealthily dependent and he milked it for all it was worth."

One time, shortly after Collymore had moved from Liverpool to Aston Villa, he says he took a telephone call from Stretford begging for money. "His business was expanding and he had calculated I owed him £80,000." Collymore says he ran some checks and worked out he did not owe a penny. "A couple of days later Stretford rang again. This time he was near enough in tears. He said: 'You do love me, don't you Stan?'" Collymore wrote a cheque because "that was the kind of hold he had over me".

This time, however, Stretford is not going to get what he and his client want. United, as the Guardian revealed last week, are not going to let Rooney join Chelsea, no matter how many roubles Roman Abramovich chucks at it or what the player and his agent cook up next.

Hopefully Liverpool will stick to what they say regarding Luis Suárez and, between them, the two clubs can show that sometimes it does not matter how much a player stamps his feet. It is not going to change the culture but it would be a break from the norm – and that is not a bad thing at all.

Bale is a slightly different situation because of the sheer amount of money involved and the fact Spurs would not be selling to a direct rival. On that basis, it is going to be extremely hard for Daniel Levy to turn down a world-record transfer (a friend of mine, with connections to the Bernabéu, reports back that Madrid have already pre‑ordered 50,000 shirts with Bale's name emblazoned across the back). Yet the Spurs chairman, just like his counterparts at Old Trafford and Anfield, is entitled to be aggrieved given the way the player and his Mr Fixit have gone about it and it is not totally out of the question Bale, Suárez and Rooney will all discover that player-power isn't this season's fashion.

Maybe – and this would be an irony – Baines will be the only one of the lot to go. One thing's for certain: it is a shame there are not more like him.

Club tours, jet lag and the 2014 World Cup

That was a poor piece of defending from Gary Cahill for Scotland's second goal at Wembley, even if it was a wonderfully taken shot from Kenny Miller, but it is no real surprise the England centre‑half was not at his best, considering he had flown in from Chelsea's pre-season trip to the US the day before and was probably still trying to shake his head clear of jet lag.

Chelsea were based in Washington, playing one game there and then making round trips to Indianapolis, New York and Miami for their other tour matches. Before that, they spent 15 days on their first summer tour, playing in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta.

In total, they reckon they have flown something like 24,600 air miles. Or, to put it another way, just short of the world's circumference. That is a long pre-season any year but especially if you remember they played 69 games last season then, in Cahill's case, he went straight into England's friendly against Republic of Ireland and then the four‑day trip to Brazil.

It all part of the modern game – Manchester United, for example, have played in Bangkok, Sydney, Yokohama, Osaka and Stockholm – but it does make you wonder what kind of condition these players are going to be in if England actually qualify for the 2014 World Cup.

On their knees, you would imagine.

Saga of West Ham shirt 'sweetener'Futre refused to just make up the numOnly 10 was perfect for furious Futre

Antonio Valencia's decision to abandon the number 7 at Manchester United this season, directly linking the pressure of taking Cristiano Ronaldo's old shirt to his deterioration in form last season, reminds me of a story Harry Redknapp used to tell about when he was managing West Ham and had just brought Paulo Futre to the club.

Futre was allocated the No16 shirt when he turned up for his debut, at Arsenal, but regarded it as insult and refused to get changed. "Futre," he started shouting, pointing to his chest. "Futre, No10."

Redknapp tried to talk him round but it turned into an argument and Futre was having none of it. "No fucking 16," he carried on. "Fuck off. No 10, no play." True to his word, he then stormed out of Highbury and took a cab back to his hotel.

The following Monday he turned up (with a lawyer) at Upton Park and offered to pay £100,000 for his favourite number. Redknapp, by his own admission, was on the point of throttling him by that stage but eventually agreed to talk to John Moncur to see if he was willing to give it up. So Futre offered another sweetener. "He owned a villa, reportedly one of the most luxurious in Portugal, on a cliff-top on the coast and offered Moncur a fortnight there free if he handed over his shirt," Redknapp recalls. "To be honest, I don't think Moncur gave a monkey's what number he wore but he took the free holiday."