‘The taps of football outrage are gushing again. They have been turned on by the suggestion that Rio Ferdinand, barely half a year out of the suspension that followed his drug test scandal, is attempting to drive skywards his price at Manchester United, or perhaps Chelsea, maybe even up to the dizzying level of £150,000 a week.
‘Is Rio worth 150 grand? Not on his overall record at Old Trafford, and this is quite apart from the disaster of his failure to take a mandated drugs test. Yes, he is a marvellously gifted player, as we saw on Sunday when he patrolled so elegantly the wreckage of what was supposed to be Newcastle's attack. But when the pressure is at its height, when the opposition are snapping at his heels, is he the franchise player, a hard centre of defence from whom a lapse of concentration is a rare and stupefying departure from the norm? Hardly. Old pros are frequently dismayed by his failure to attack the ball in the air.
‘Certainly, sharper defence at a critical moment in the League Cup semi-final second leg at Old Trafford might well have prevented one trophy finishing up at Stamford Bridge. Sir Alex Ferguson was outraged when a free-kick by Damien Duff was left unchallenged by a defence which Ferdinand was supposed to lead.
‘Maybe the lesson of the latest Ferdinand affair, when he shared a London restaurant with the Chelsea chief executive, Peter Kenyon, and created a rather shrill echo of the latter's public collision with Arsenal's Ashley Cole, is that at all levels of football the game's dramatically changed reward system has still to be absorbed fully.
‘It is something to remember, if we can, when a Rio Ferdinand, in his fashionably tattered jeans and mind-boggling income, pushes out the bowl like Oliver Twist. It is his right to ask. The responsibility of Manchester United and Chelsea is simply to consider his true value.’