"Imagine another job where it’s normalised to get abuse like this.” Those were the words of Neal Maupay after the Everton players were questioned by some supporters as they caught their train home from the hammering at Tottenham Hotspur.

Since then, he is the one who has been dishing out the questionable comments with a slew of dodgy jibes at the club that paid millions of pounds to give him a chance at becoming a hero.

Instead he is now a villain of Goodison Park. His exit was sealed with a screenshot from famous jailbreak movie The Shawshank Redemption, the scene when Andy Dufresne finally makes it out of prison.

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The meaning was obvious even if it is hard for any supporter to understand the desire for a player to troll a fanbase after a failed stint during which he was repeatedly given chances while picking up monthly pay checks that would be life changing to most in the stands.

This is part of Maupay’s character, the caricature he has created of himself is one that he has built on the pitch and online and continues to manufacture. His provocative post - the 28-year-old writing on X following the Blues' loss to Nottingham Forest that “whenever I’m having a bad day I just check the Everton score and smile” - inspired a backlash online on Sunday night. It was one he would have been prepared for and probably wanted. In the world of social media, all engagement has its benefits after all.

It was not always like this. I sat down with Maupay with in Australia when Everton visited Sydney during the World Cup break in 2022. I found him an engaging speaker who seemed to genuinely appreciate the size of the Blues and the opportunity the club had granted him.

He was in awe of then manager Frank Lampard and appeared desperate to make a positive impression. Somewhere along the way that desire switched and both club and player have some responsibility for the failure that his time on Merseyside represents.

From the player’s side, he had chances. He so nearly became a hero - had he found a way past Alisson Becker in what ended up the goalless Merseyside derby at Goodison that season then his name would have gone down in Blues folklore.

There were other opportunities too - he spent much of last season on loan at Brentford but only after starting the first game of last season against Fulham. Injuries may have provided that start in a Sean Dyche setup that did not favour him but had he scored the glorious chance presented to him in the first half then he would have been given time to build on that.

Instead he will leave Everton in the summer with just one goal to his name. There has been no shortage of supporters pointing out to him that Craig Dawson has scored more own goals for Everton than that over the same period of time.

Whether he was ever a suitable signing for the club is a fair question to ask. He may have been destined to fail the moment he arrived.

At best he was bought to support Dominic Calvert-Lewin at the height of his fitness struggles and while that may have been the ambition, there was little he could offer in terms of a Plan B that would have been useful to prepare. Once Dyche took over from Lampard it was always going to be an uphill battle for the diminutive forward.

But for all that, Everton kept supporting Maupay. When he was subjected to vile online abuse after that Fulham game the club stood by him, publicly condemned it and sought to investigate.

The Blues were firm in their backing of their player and unwillingness to accept the unacceptable.

That is what makes Maupay’s behaviour so distasteful and disrespectful. Of course what he is doing is of no comparison to some of the messages he shared back then. His comments are essentially harmless jibes. But they are unnecessary.

And putting aside the desire for engagement, the world of football ‘banter’ the player perhaps wants to be part of and any idea he may have of being a cult-hero for his willingness to flirt with controversy, his digs at Everton lack a class that the club afforded him.