James Lawton: Loyalty at heart of the matter for Leeds and Ferdinand

Anyone ready to lecture England centre-back on moral verities must remember that it is his club who have been willing to consider offers

Rio Ferdinand says that it is the toughest decision of his life. It is some life, and some rum values attached to it, you might be provoked to say, and on the face of it there is not much of an argument.

Ferdinand, aged 23, has given himself 24 hours to decide whether he will honour the remaining four years of a contract with Leeds United which pays him £35,000-a-week and was, with its accompanying transfer fee of £18m, until quite recently regarded as an ultimate act of reckless football generosity, one that might indeed initiate a general breakdown in the financial structure of the English game. Now Manchester United are anxious to double both Ferdinand's value in the market and his wages. He says: "It is a huge dilemma for me."

Maybe so, but perhaps he will understand if we do not torture ourselves unduly over the agonising options facing today's football star. On one hand there is the call of gratitude and loyalty, which, who knows, might just be creeping on to the table in the family conference currently going on in Peckham. This argument would involve recognition of the fact that the rest of English football was stunned when the then Leeds manager, David O'Leary, persuaded his board to mortgage the future for a young player of undoubted talent but a reputation for a frailty of concentration which was roughly quantified at one gift to the opposition forward line per game.

It would also note that Ferdinand's career profile has soared in his brief time at Elland Road, to the point where he was unquestionably England's outstanding player in the recent World Cup. No doubt Leeds' new manager, Terry Venables, made this point vigorously enough at their meeting on Sunday.

The opposing case is brief and amoral. It says run for the money with any excuse you care to mention. The current favourite is that a player's passion for the game, which of course outweighs any other consideration, can only be enhanced by increased chances of picking up silverware.

If Ferdinand favours the second course of action, no doubt the Leeds supporters will be as inflamed as those of Spurs when their hero Sol Campbell, having talked for so long about his deep attachment to White Hart Lane, took the Arsenal gold. It will not be hard to see their point. Ferdinand, whose arrival at Elland Road invited such widespread scepticism, has grown into a player central to their dreams of occupying the terrain once claimed by Don Revie's team. Even in a modern game where the primacy of money has never been more overt, the player's move to Old Trafford would surely be a shocking illustration of the transient loyalties of young men who routinely become millionaires before they have properly learned the game. But then which of those fans, weaned on today's values, would not eagerly swap their employers for a 100 per cent rise in salary?

There is a further complication for anyone ready to lecture young Rio on the moral verities.

It is the position of his club. Ferdinand had not been railing against his contract, or making noises about his desire for a move – he had not produced the drip, drip of speculation-fuelling ambivalence which has been the style of, say, Patrick Vieira and his agent. Indeed, all evidence suggests that the origins of Sir Alex Ferguson's interest in the player stemmed from the apparent willingness of Leeds to listen to offers. It is on the record that Leeds have dramatically changed their position on Ferdinand, to the point where O'Leary must be feeling particularly confused.

The nearest thing to an explanation for O'Leary's brusque sacking was that he was "not a team player." This has been widely assumed to be a reference to an O'Leary newspaper outburst in which he was critical of the decision to off-load a player he considered vital to the club's future. Some would say that O'Leary had already imperilled his position in various ways, not least by that other more notorious piece of penmanship which appeared in a Sunday newspaper at the end of the Bowyer-Woodgate trial and gave every indication of losing him his hold over the dressing-room. But in the matter of Ferdinand there is surely no possible shades of interpretation. One day, Ferdinand was available to the highest bidder. On the next one, Leeds had a new, innovative manager and a renewed conviction about the importance of Ferdinand's presence.

None of this negates a single clause in the player's contract – or reduces his moral obligation to observe its terms. But when the Leeds chairman, Peter Ridsdale, makes the case for Ferdinand's loyalty, and says that Venables has told the player of the vital part he has to play in the club's future, he should not be too surprised by a touch of cynicism. Ferdinand was going about his business, rather brilliantly, when the issue was first raised.

Loyalty is a wonderful quality, and never more valuable than in today's football. This requires Leeds United, too, to ask themselves a few questions. The most important one concerns whether they are treating the possibility of faithfulness in Rio Ferdinand as a jewel to be prized – or as a passing convenience?