There are those who will say that Robbie Fowler’s slap in the face is just what Cardiff City deserve after the way they have treated fellow golden oldie Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink.

Fowler, after an injury-wracked season in which he played just a handful of games for the Bluebirds in return for a modest £15,000 a week, has upped sticks and hopped off to Blackburn, ostensibly because he wants to end his career where he began it – in the top flight of English football.

Now, there may be an element of truth in that… because, as one of the richest footballers on the planet, Fowler needs another massive bundle of  Premier League cash about as much as Roman Abramovich does.

He was only with Cardiff for one miserable season in which, because of a lack of match fitness and recurring injury problems, he played just 13 games and scored four goals. Roughly one quarter of the season of action… so that effectively ups his wages to £60,000 a week.

Had he been fit enough to play the entire season, who knows how many appearances he’d have made? But the fact is that Cardiff have probably paid him around £750,000 during his stay at he club – and he’s delivered precious little. Wouldn’t you have thought he’d want to repay their faith in him rather than showing no loyalty whatsoever and skipping off to Blackburn?

An operation to cure a hip problem meant he didn’t play a single game in 2008 – and the fact Cardiff went on to reach the FA Cup final for the first time since 1927 suggests he wasn’t greatly missed. But £15,000 a week for a crock on crutches was a burden the Bluebirds could have done without. The goalscoring magic and experience of the former Liverpool and England idol could also have proved the difference between defeat and victory against Portsmouth at Wembley.

In the event, manager Dave Jones resisted calls to plonk fit-again Fowler on the bench at Wembley – preferring to go with the less-auspicious players who had at least been directly involved in getting the Bluebirds to the final.

There seemed to be no grudges on Fowler’s part and it appeared he had verbally agreed to stay on for another 12 months on a ‘play-as-you-play’ basis after Cardiff showed remarkable faith in a player whose catalogue of woes over the past 12 months suggests he is pretty well washed up.

Paul Ince clearly thinks differently in luring the 33-year-old Scouser to Ewood Park. Not something that Mark Hughes would have supported – otherwise Fowler would clearly have moved to Blackburn in the first place rather than join Cardiff.

OK, no one wishes bad on anyone. But if renegade Robbie proves as big a hit on the field at Rovers as he did at Ninian Park, few Ewood fans will be enamoured. They must be asking two questions right now. Firstly, does he have any chance of winning a regular first-team place? And secondly, will he remain injury-free for the next 12 months? I’m sorry to say that the answer to both appears to be a resounding ‘no’.

Fowler certainly appears to have been less than fair with Cardiff, whose new signing Ross McCormack is on record as saying the chance to work with the former Anfield hero was one of the key elements in his decision to join the Bluebirds from Motherwell: ''It was a good chance to come and play with a player like Robbie,'' he said after turning down offers from Nottingham Forest among other clubs. ''He was my hero when I was growing up, I was a big Liverpool fan and he was scoring all the goals for them.''

But the way the Welsh club showed Hasselbaink the door was even more callous. The second of the two veteran strikers picked up on frees last summer apparently had a written agreement that if he played a certain number of games, he would be offered another 12 months. The former Leeds and Chelsea hitman duly played 36 games during the season – one for each year of his age - also at a reputed £15,000 a week.

OK, he wasn’t exactly a smash hit with just seven goals, though his superb effort against Wolves in the fifth round of the FA Cup brought back memories of the Dutch international’s halcyon days.

Any City fan will tell you creaking Jimmy is no longer up to playing in a team aiming to challenge for a Premier League place. But if Cardiff didn’t want to keep him, they should have made sure he didn’t go over the games threshold that would earn him another year.

They made their bed by playing him more regularly than perhaps he deserved. Now they should do the honest thing and lie in it.