By Tom Fordyce

England fly out to Turkey on Thursday, leaving behind an unholy and unprecedented row.

Three days of vicious wrangling after Rio Ferdinand's exclusion from the squad almost ended with the team refusing to play their key qualifier for Euro 2004.

Which of the key men involved come out of the whole sorry affair with any credit, and which leave with their heads held low?

Mark Palios

The Football Association's chief executive said on his appointment that he would take a tougher line on anti-doping than his predecessors, and his decision to omit Ferdinand from the England squad certainly did that.

Palios ponders his options on Wednesday

Palios cannot be faulted for sticking to his guns when the England players demanded Ferdinand be included. To cave in at that stage would have left the FA a laughing-stock and left his own position untenable.

Where he fell down was in failing to appear at Wednesday afternoon's dramatic news conference, leaving his director of communications Paul Barber to face the incredulous and angry media hordes by himself.

Palios is the public face of the FA and should have been there in the heat of the camera lights to explain his organisation's stance.

He will also need to overhaul the FA's existing drugs disciplinary procedures. UK Sport told the FA on 26 September that Ferdinand had failed to take his test, yet the FA did not contact Manchester United until 3 October.

David Beckham

Beckham is part of the England players' committee that also includes Gary Neville, Michael Owen and Sol Campbell.

These senior players were instrumental in the initial decision to strike in favour of their friend Ferdinand.

If one were to be generous in the extreme, they should be commended for loyalty to a team-mate. Yet, as professional footballers, they should have realised from the word go that Ferdinand did not have a leg to stand on, and that the FA had no choice but to exclude him.

To threaten not to travel to a key England game demonstrated that they were horribly out of touch with the views of most supporters, let alone their own duties to the anti-doping battle.

Star players these days have an awful lot of power. With that must come responsibility, rather than foot-stamping petulance.

Gordon Taylor

It is Taylor's job, as chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association, to fight his members' corner.

In that capacity his attacks on the FA can be understood, if not justified. Taylor also remained a calm presence on a day of frantic negotiations at England's HQ at Sopwell House.

Yet his main beef with the FA was that they broke their own rules by releasing Ferdinand's name before any charges had been brought.

He was aiming his barbs at the wrong target. It was United, and Ferdinand's advisors, who released the player's name into the public domain with a series of statements on Monday night.

Taylor must also have realised that, whether or not Ferdinand's name became public, the United man had committed a basic error in failing to attend his drugs test.

That is impossible to defend, and Taylor should have made the dissenters in the England squad more aware of that fact.

Sven-Goran Eriksson

Sven wasn't really involved in the whole mess, right?

Sven: Silent night, not wholly right

Exactly. And that was his problem. This was not an occasion for Swedish neutrality, but for pragmatism.

His players were disrupting the build-up to their most important game in 16 months. As a coach it was his responsibility to step in and get their minds back on the difficult task of getting the draw they need in Istanbul.

You might say that Eriksson could not risk alienating himself from his squad. It is certainly true that he would have preferred to have Ferdinand in his team.

At the same time he is paid �2m a year by the FA, and should if anything feel a stronger loyalty to his employers.

But both those concerns should have been subsumed into the desire to see England qualify for the finals of Euro 2004 - which means accepting the FA's decision to drop Ferdinand and making his players do the same.

Manchester United

United do not wish to see one of their most important men banned from playing for them.

That desire does not justify the attacks they have made on the FA over their decision to exclude Ferdinand from the England squad.

United are a club professional in everything they do. Yet it was their medical staff who allowed Ferdinand to leave their training ground without giving his test.

It is not the responsibility of UK Sport's testers to find Ferdinand or to wait for him if he decides to leave. Ferdinand and the club could have cleared their name straight away had they taken the opportunity when given to provide a clean sample.

They did not.

It was also United who revealed Ferdinand's name, not the FA, and United players, past and present, at the heart of the rebellion by the England squad. The club do not come out of this with any credit.

Rio Ferdinand

Ferdinand failed in his duty as a professional footballer to attend his drugs test.

He would have been told a thousand times of his obligations by both club and the FA, and to plead forgetfulness is no defence.

Does he deserve some credit for phoning his England team-mates and begging them not to go on strike because of him?

A little, but not much. It was the very least he could do.