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There was an impressive list of legends on display as the Arsenal All Stars took on Milan Glorie in an August Emirates fund-raiser.

The visitors’ mouthwatering gallery of greats included true giants of the game: Cafu, Paolo Maldini, Edgar Davids and Paolo Di Canio.

The Gunners’ stellar side twinkled with top talent to leave the Arsenal faithful bursting with nostalgic pride and dreaming of a golden age: Overmars... Ljungberg... Petit... Kanu... Gilberto Silva... Justin Hoyte.

Wait! What? Run that by me again? Arsenal all time legend Justin Hoyte? That can’t be right surely. Did Ray Parlour drop out late on?

Hoyte will have been chuffed to bits to have pulled on the shirt again and just to have been on the same pitch as a K-Tel collection of household names.

And no doubt he zipped about athletically at right back for the full 90 minutes - but you can’t help but think a few hearts sank when he was announced incongruously before the game.

He may well have played for Arsenal 68 times - including an FA Cup final win, a League Cup defeat and games in the Champions League - he won’t feature in many tattoos.

And he hasn’t got a coveted slot on the larger than life ring of heroes depicted around the outside perimeter of the ground.

Although to be fair, Hoyte is written into Emirates’ history books: when he netted against Charlton in January 2007 he had become the first Englishman to score for Arsenal at the box fresh new ground.

For Hoyte, swaggering around in the swanky surrounds of the Emirates will have been in stark contrast to his previous outing.

Just a few weeks before that the fast fading full back, still just 31, turned out for Hamilton Academical Under-23 side in a pre-season friendly away at Motherwell.

He impressed boss Martin Canning in a two week trial and Accies were keen to sign him as defensive cover by the Scottish Premier League side - who’s wage ceiling is around the £1,000 a week mark - couldn’t make the numbers stack up.

So Hoyte is free agent, training alone and waiting for an opening in a lower league club - preferably within the London commuter belt - in need of a speedy right-back.

He is drifting and waiting, becalmed and waiting for January, a football ghost ship drifting.

His slide towards that frustrating inertia has been swift after his exit from Boro leaving barely a ripple.

He was released at the end of last season after Dagenham and Redbridge were relegated from League Two and axed most of their professional squad prior to a major rebuild.

He had played just 28 games. Which is 20 more than he played in two seasons at Millwall before that.

The ill-fated switch to the New Den had always had a whiff of desperation and impending car crash about it.

He was surplus to requirements at the Riverside and he wanted to move back South for family reasons - his partner, now fiancée, was a jobbing chorus girl in the West End - and so he jumped into the first London-bound life raft that floated past.

Unfortunately his smooth skill set polished by the Arsenal academy was in stark contrast to the grit, drive and spiteful battle-scarred passion demanded by the Millwall crowd.

He was roared at and barracked after failing to make leg-breaking tackles in his first few outings and quickly became a terrace target, soon slipping to the outer reaches of the squad, over-looked by a procession of bosses who wanted a full back with bottle who could tackle.

And to be fair, that is where his relationship with Boro fans floundered too. Most would admit he was a “good” player in technical terms but thought he lacked steel and that spark of spite that makes a winner.

He had a deft touch, neat close control, two feet, he could pick a pass, hold a line and play in both full-back slots. He was an academy player box ticking exercise.

And he had a serious burst of pace. He was a schoolboy sprint star who zipped up and down the touchline on a metaphorical moped.

That’s no surprise as he comes from a speedy gene pool. His mam Wendy won 4x100m Commonwealth gold in Brisbane in 1982 and only missed out on going to the LA Olympics in 1984 because she was pregnant with our future hero.

But for all his deft touches and hot-footed over-lapping, he was seen as being a faint-heart, a player who fancied himself as an artisan instead of a grafter, a non-contact Fancy Dan instead of a battler, an athlete at a time when the team needed spirit and steel and drive. He was seen as a mental weakling.

It was easy to draw the conclusion he shared some of the same delicately nurtured and polite Arsenal DNA as Jeremie Aliadiere.

When the heat was on he shrivelled. And for much of the time he was at Boro, the heat was on: mid-table slogging, a relegation, two years of managerial upheaval and failed play-off pushes. It was no time for a luxury player full of fancy flourishes but no fight.

I liked him. He was nice, humble, clean-living and unassuming bloke who knew he was lucky to be in a fantastic job.

And in his last season he did a good job. He even scored a worldy, a screamer against Sheffield Wednesday.

But my abiding memory will be the look of sheer terror in his eyes at St James’ Park for the Premier League do-or-die relegation clash in April 2009.

The press box was very low and just behind the dug-outs, perfectly placed to see the panic as he hared about aimlessly, avoid frontline responsibility on a night when Boro needed a win to survive.

Supports saw similar moments over the years and for them, there was no way back for Hoyte.

He was on a sticky wicket from the moment he arrived. And his career was seen by cynics as one that tracked the slow, sickening slide from an historic high towards a painful down-sized mediocrity.

He was brought in as a £3m project as the club cashed in on a solid, proven professional in Luke Young - a £6m exit to Aston Villa - and for many that was the start of a poorly managed decline that ended up with a long, cold and dark spell in Championship purgatory.

Hoyte wasn’t to blame for that of course. But if you are looking for cyphers of the shrinking, if you want milestones on the road to relegation, his arrival could well be one.

He arrived with a big reputation. He had won things, he had played in the Champions League, he was pencilled in as a possible England star and Sunderland were gutted Boro had snatched him as he had excelled there on loan. So hopes were high.

Those hopes were eroded slowly and surely as it dawned that his early tentative displays, his bedding in period, was as good as it was going to get. He was alright and no more.

In his first few years he was an insipid player on big money, the kind of non-productive benchwarmers ailing clubs acquire before the dead weight drags them down. But at Boro he was playing every week.

To be fair, he improved gradually after the arrival of Tony Mowbray when his pace was utilised more, he started to deliver the odd cross and crucially, he took a massive pay cut to sign a new deal.

But culturally the damage was done. Few fans were won over by marginally better displays that were that too little, too late and many thought he was still paid far more than he delivered.

He was eased out with barely a murmur from fans.

Mogga signed Frazer Richardson to replace him. Which is an indictment in itself.