DESPITE the club’s attempts to play down reports that Fernando Torres is on his way out of Anfield, I fear that a parting of the ways now looks inevitable.

If you’re a player and you weren’t going to move then surely you’d come out and issue a statement to tell all the fans that you’re staying.

First we had Roy Hodgson telling us that he’d had a ‘pleasant’ meeting with Torres but his “beef is with the club, not me,” then the manager says that the feedback he’s been getting from managing director Christian Purslow over the matter has been ‘positive.’

However, we are yet to hear anything from the player himself on the matter and I take that as bad news as much as anything.

If you’re Liverpool you need to know where you stand even if it’s the worst case scenario and the player does want out.

It’s a similar situation with Javier Mascherano really only the Argentine seem to be a bit more vocal over his preferred destination.

Players should have the decency, integrity and honesty to come out and tell everyone that they see their future elsewhere rather than keeping us all in the dark, hanging on and waiting.

Tell us you “want to play in the Champions League” or whatever but just let the club and the fans know.

If that happened then at least Liverpool would have five weeks or so to bring in some replacements and everybody could move on.

It’s not even like the old days when you’d nervously have to knock on the manager’s door and an intimidating figure like Bill Shankly might give you a real dressing down for having the temerity to want to leave Liverpool.

Now you just get your agent to contact the club by phone and he might not even speak directly to the manager and go straight to the chief executive.