James Lawton: Eriksson must not forget football's moral dimension

Woodgate's omission was the right decision. So why did the England coach feel the need to justify it with an irrelevant comparison?

Everything you thought you knew about him said it would be a simple matter for Sven Goran Eriksson. Jonathan Woodgate, he could have said, was not included in his World Cup plans because of a clear moral issue. Sometimes it is necessary to make a stand, impose a value. Sometimes you have to do more than mouth platitudes. Sometimes you have to announce who you are and what you represent.

As the coach has said many times, it is impossible to detach completely events on and off the field. Woodgate had a price to pay beyond a fine and community service. He had to rehabilitate himself both as a citizen and a professional footballer.

Eriksson had been talking the talk splendidly, with much erudition and a fine implication that he knew the difference between right and wrong. So why, when he came to act, did he feel the need to impersonate a performing circus dog jumping through a flaming hoop? Surely not because of "media pressure"? His linking of Woodgate's situation with that of some recidivist hooligan fan banned for three years certainly smacks of this. There is no meaningful parallel. Hooligans are not selected to represent their country. They are self-appointed pests. Woodgate has to be assessed not merely on his playing ability but his character and his record.

To have selected him a few months after his conviction for affray and unprofessional behaviour which according to his manager, David O'Leary, "shamed the club", would have been a direct contradiction of Eriksson's earlier assertion that players had responsibility to England not just on the field but in every aspect of their lives. Why would this admirable view be compromised by a pragmatic need to strengthen his cover in the centre of defence?

Anyone listening to the debate thus far might conclude that in English football absolutely no value is attached to the theory that selection for the national team should be based on something more than mere proficiency. When the hugely promising but still unformed talent of Steve Gerrard was smudged by a show of triumphalism at the end of the 5-1 victory over Germany in Munich by the open baiting of his Liverpool colleague Dietmar Hamman, Eriksson talked impressively of the need for respect. Respect for everyone: team-mates, team workers, officials and, most of all, opponents. If you lost that, said Eriksson, you were in danger of losing everything.

He said that players had to be judged as much on their character as their ability. When you played for England, you had been picked out as an exceptional player and, ideally, an exemplary professional. In the Woodgate furore there seems to have been a dwindling memory of quite what his actions and those of his team-mate Lee Bowyer had inflicted on the image of the game and that, quite apart from the findings of the jury, there was no doubt that their behaviour had been a travesty of what might reasonably be expected from professionals. Especially those deemed worthy to represent their country on an international stage.

One thread of the argument against Woodgate's exclusion is that the Football Association, acutely conscious of the game's image, has somehow tied Eriksson's hands, made him much less his own man than his immaculately sophisticated public performances have indicated. This is another red herring. The FA has employed Eriksson as a coach of impeccable credentials and fine intelligence. But in doing that it has not abandoned its own responsibilities, the chief of which is indeed that protection of the image of the game. In these days of "spin", the word image has unfortunate connotations, but its importance should not be dismissed because of this. Right and wrong remain distinguishable, and in this case the line, however imperfectly, has been drawn.

If indeed it is true that the FA chief executive, Adam Crozier, was required to remind Eriksson of his own public statements on the need for a moral dimension, it is only to his credit. More than two months ago, Crozier told me: "We are very aware that the FA have to set standards of behaviour and this need has been reinforced by recent events. We are also agreed though that these standards and responsibilities have to be met by everybody in the game – not just players. Sven has made it clear what he expects from his players, and while he is a man of the world, he knows what he wants and, like us all, he is anxious to draw a line on what is acceptable."

Another criticism of Woodgate's exclusion is that it is a convenient place in which to do the right thing. If Michael Owen or David Beckham had, however improbably, compromised themselves to the degree of Woodgate, would their World Cup places be in any kind of jeopardy? For the moment, this is another irrelevance. If that situation arose, the FA and Eriksson would again be required to do the right, consistent thing.

In fairness to the central figure in this deeply muddled affair, it has to be said that Woodgate has made no claims on his own behalf. He has taken the punishments imposed by the court and his club, such as they were, without complaint, and his demeanour has suggested a high degree of remorse. Certainly, and whatever the repercussions from an impending civil court action against him, it is reasonable to believe that in the course of time he will have the opportunity to fulfil all his football ambitions. As a matter of record, Tony Adams went nearly two years between his release from prison and the resumption of his international career. That Woodgate's club chairman, Peter Ridsdale of Leeds, should ride into the argument despite his own spectacular history of prevarication in the matter pulls off the unlikely achievement of being both predictable and breathtaking. He says, piously, that he hopes the Woodgate decision is entirely a football one.

Of course it isn't – and nor should it be. The FA and Eriksson have juggled their way to the right decision. The precedent, however it was achieved, is important. It is about a recognition of the consequences of shameful behaviour. Who can really argue that there should not always be some?

Threat to withdraw TV money exposes game's frail foundations

There should be no limits on the Nationwide Football League's effort to stop ITV Digital's shameless attempt to renege on an agreement which, having been made, underwrote a huge swath of the embattled English game.

But even as they prosecute their legitimate claims, they should ponder the realities which the affair so pitilessly exposes. At least half the football clubs of England cannot exist without the hand-outs of television masters who by the very nature of their business are fickle.

It means that a harsh reassessment is long overdue. Part-time professional football, radically reduced divisions and geographic rationalisation have to be embraced not some time in the future but now.

What football needs most is a heavy dose of practicality. Last week there was airy talk of a new initiative in the endemic problem of managers on the take and agents willing to make the "bungs". Investigative units – far tougher than the one which performed with such pathetic results in the wake of the George Graham affair – were proposed.

The requirement is an entirely new system of transfer dealing. I once explained how an English football transfer worked to an official of the American National Football League, which has a central clearing office for all deals and insists agents do not receive as much as a plugged nickel from anyone but the players they represent and only then when the entire deal has been examined by league lawyers. After I finished, the official said: "Please, run that by me again." I did, and after a long pause he said: "That's unbelievable." Indeed it is.