James Lawton: Venables may still be seen as saviour as Leeds lurch further into crisis

As angry Leeds United fans last night raged at the imminent sale of Jonathan Woodgate, and what many claimed was the betrayal of all their hopes, a great figure of a more glorious past spoke of the "collective madness" which has brought the club so low.

"Let's be honest," said Peter Lorimer, the fabled 'Thunderfoot' of the 1960s and 70s, "everyone here got carried away – David O'Leary named the players he wanted – and in return he promised the rich rewards of Europe, but for one reason and another he couldn't deliver.

"I think the main one was that he made some stupid remarks and published a book after the trial of Jonathan Woodgate and Lee Bowyer – and effectively lost the dressing room. Tie that up with the collapse of the transfer market, when players who were valued at more than £100m suddenly weren't worth more than £30m as a job lot, and you can easily see how it was that the club yesterday had to sell their best player. It's a terrible thing to happen – and the best we can hope for is a bit of damage control."

Ironically, Lorimer's chief hope at the end of the day which also saw the departure of Robbie Fowler at the end of an exodus which started with Rio Ferdinand, and included Robbie Keane, Olivier Dacourt, and Lee Bowyer, was that manager Terry Venables would decide to stay on at Elland Road.

Venables, of whom sharply improved performance was demanded by the chairman and chief executive Peter Ridsdale at the club's annual general meeting, has moved, at a pace which in his more reflective moments he must find a little bewildering, from villain to potential saviour.

"The manager and his coaching staff deserve a lot of credit for keeping the team playing well through all of this," Lorimer said. "They lost at Chelsea the other night but they played well and showed a lot of spirit. In the circumstances a lot of teams would have said: 'What the hell is all this about?' And packed it in. But they showed a lot of spirit. I don't think Venables will go. He has a good contract and he is a football man and I just don't think he will walk away.

"A lot of criticism has been levelled at him and most of it has been very unfair. He's been in an impossible situation from the start and at no time has he tried to blame anybody for the club's situation. At one point Leeds were facing a free-fall situation, but he checked that and started to get the team playing again. That was a hell of an achievement."

Whatever Venables' decision, the wider implications of the sale of Woodgate, and its statement of financial meltdown at Elland Road, will surely echo long after the club's season of trial is over.

The truth is that the club, who two years ago were in the semi-finals of the European Cup and are now involved in nothing less than a fight for survival, have not been alone in their policy of mortgaging the future at ruinous interfest rates. Huge borrowings against the purchase of players, and then the surrender of ownership of the players in lease-back arrangements, represent the kind of gambling which is much more properly a source of concern than the recreational flutters of someone like Michael Owen.

Last night Venables was in discussions with Ridsdale, the high-profile figure who was happy to parade the signings of such as Rio Ferdinand before ecstatic fans, but is now, understandably, much more inclined to linger in the shadows. The exchange of views, it has to be presumed, was particularly forthright at the manager's end of the conversation.

Repeatedly, Venables has been confronted by a shifting situation. From the initial impression that he was merely asked to raise £15m in the transfer market – which was accomplished at one stroke when Ferdinand moved to Manchester United – he has been obliged to watch the dismembering of the team he inherited as supposed title challengers.

He was reported to have threatened his resignation in the event of Woodgate's sale, but he denies that. Venables is not given to such emotional gestures, and a pragmatic style is perhaps not surprising in someone who survived wars with Sir Alan Sugar and extended dealings with the Football Association – and also managed to win the FA Cup for Tottenham under the shadow of the bailiffs.

Such an achievement would be dwarfed if he was now to rescue something from the debris of Elland Road.

That challenge – which is somewhat reminiscent of the SOS call he received from Middlesbrough a few years ago – and the rewards of a handsome contract – would be his only justifications for staying at a place where he was so recently reviled – and which surely, for the sake of the health of all of football, needs to be the subject of a ferocious inquiry.

Leeds, last night, were the disturbing symptom of a potentially rapacious disease.