For sale: one used Captain, Leader and Legend

For different reasons, and with varying degrees of emotion, yesterday became the day of two Terrys. In the morning, news that the broadcasting legend Terry Wogan had died, ending a 50-year radio and television career characterised by unparalleled wit, intelligence, charm and endearing self-awareness.

By the evening, it was news that John Terry, the most successful captain in Chelsea Football Club history and certainly the club's most successful homegrown talent in two decades, would be leaving at the end of the season after failing to secure a follow-on contract into his 36th year.

For the reasons we all know and don't require repeating, the contrast between these two people with Terry in their name couldn't be greater. But there is - or was - at least a common thread of loyalty. In the case of the footballer, there is mixed opinion, however, as to why Chelsea should extend his contract.

The club has made its position clear on over-30s, that they receive one-year extensions and no more, and ever since Roman Abramovic installed Andre Villas-Boas as manager in 2011, it was clear that the club wanted to ease out the old guard, players who, perhaps, had an unduly heavy influence over the dressing room.

JT has never been in posession of the fastest legs in football, and there's little requirement to point out the frailties that have been a part - though hardly responsible for - Chelsea's travails this season, but that is not the point. Terry may have been a dominant figure in the dressing room, but you got more than just a challenge to authority - you got the "Captain, Leader, Legend" so prominently proclaimed by the club's own banner strung across the tier divide of the Matthew Harding Stand.

To look at Chelsea's apparent reluctance - so far - to offer Terry a new contact is to look squarely through the restricting prism of the business mechanics of football. And, before we get on to the romance of football, which continues to overwhelmingly drive the sport - after all, isn't that what this weekend's FA Cup has been all about? - business mechanics have seen Chelsea sign players like Fernando Torres five years ago, Radamel Falcao last summer, and, now, Alexandre Pato - crocked strikers who continued to be a waste of money and the club's energy. And yet, with his lack of speed and public status as football's least-loved player outside of Stamford Bridge, John Terry continues to put more into the club than Torres, Falcao and Pato together ever would.

Before we get too carried away, however, the news of Terry's departure was just a statement he made himself, and may yet have been another act of emotional blackmail to bring Chelsea to its senses. The club have also issued a statement of their own today casting some ambiguity on the situation, to the effect of saying that Terry hasn't left yet, and things are still open.

John Terry has been an ever-present throughout the most successful period of Chelsea's history. You can easily question the ethics and morals behind Roman Abramovic's acquisition of the funds that have helped Chelsea to this success, but ask any supporter whether or not they'd go back to the ever-present threat of bankruptcy, of moribund seasons yo-yoing between the old first and second divisions, and even the old third division that once loomed ominously Chelsea. Yes, opposition fans, we do have history and, yes, I know exactly where I was when we were shit. Stamford Bridge. The answer will always be the same: we'd rather be where we are right now (well, a little higher in the Premier League, of course).

We all know those clichés about no player being bigger than the club, and that no player can go on forever. Terry probably believes that he can, but that is only symptomatic of the indestructable self belief that has regularly put his own head between a boot or a ball and the Chelsea goalmouth. What is truly sad, however, is that a club with 33 players out on loan (and probably more by midnight tonight) seems to have such an erratic player policy that it doesn't see the retinual value that Terry's huge presence in the squad can bring, especially to the younger players the club absolutely has to bring through.

Whether he has, as has been suggested, demanded a guarantee that he will be a future manager, he not only possesses a heritage beneficial to the players around him, but has a clear pedigree as a leader on the pitch. This leadership has diminished somewhat by the erosion of the spine that saw Petr Čech at is base, and then Terry, Frank Lampard, and Didier Drogba at its top, but the skipper continues to be an almighty presence on the pitch, in the dressing room and at the training ground.

© Simon Poulter 2015

"It's not going to be a fairytale ending," Terry said yesterday as he announced the ending of an 18-year run in the first team, which saw him replace no less a figure than Marcel Desailly and, as still a teenager, be bossing around more senior, more experienced figures with the authority and respect of a veteran. That was John Terry in 1998, and it's still not far off the John Terry of 2016.

So, is Chelsea making an almighty blunder, if indeed Terry does leave? Well, yes. Of course, much will depend on the incoming manager in the summer (assuming Guus Hiddink doesn't get permission from Mevrouw Hiddink to stay on). Given the range of options being rumoured - from old boys Mark Hughes and Didier Deschamps, Tottenham's Mauricio Pochettino and Antonio Conte, to Diego Simeone and even Claudio Ranieri - a new manager might not want Terry at all. Hopefully, any new manager will want to focus on the prodigious young talent Chelsea has floating about Europe, some in the squad, most out on loan.

But that should not mean that John Terry can't, shouldn't or wouldn't have a playing role at the club until the day really dawns when he has to pack it all up and become a coach. Kurt Zouma is learning more by playing alongside Terry in central defence than he would at any other club. Even Gary Cahill looks better when he has JT at his side. And New Jersey-born Matt Miazga - who signed for the club last Friday, somewhat suspiciously, too, given the timing of yesterday's news - could well be groomed to be Terry's successor by having Terry himself present to nurture him.

The upshot of this is that Chelsea still appear to be chronically naive and out of touch when it comes to what makes the club tick from its emotional centre. It should never have allowed Lampard or Drogba to go and, given the pounds it has wasted over the years on too many bad acquisitions to name here, it could easily have broken the bank to keep legends like these for the team's enduring benefit.

People like to pour scorn on the populist view that 'lifers' - the Gerrards, Giggs, Le Tissiers and Terrys of this world - are anachronisms, that football has long since moved on from being the community hub that made stars of local talent and built them from apprenticeship to retirement and beyond. And, yes, Terry - like Gerrard - has been tempted before by another club's silver, but they've been persuaded otherwise (or given in to fan power) and remained to be loved at the clubs they'd chosen to be associated with for all or most of their careers.

That is a powerful draw, but one which Chelsea's higher ups have regularly failed to recognise. Given that John Terry was the last homegrown talent to make a successful career in the first team - and that breakthrough was almost two decades ago - the myriad young players the club has now, winning title after title at Under-18 and Under-21 level, or farmed out to the four corners of Europe where, inevitably, the persist in being equally as successful - retaining Terry to help maximise these investments should be the business sense that Chelsea's executive management should appreciate.

It was then ironic that yesterday of all days Michael Emenalo, Chelsea's somewhat anonymous director of football and the man responsible for youth development and partially responsible for transfers, should appear for the first time on Twitter. Given the level of venting on Twitter over the Terry news, Emenalo is a brave man. It was he who went on Chelsea TV to talk of the "palpable" rift between José Mourinho and the players (which, given Guus Hiddink's obvious restoration of team confidence does seem viable).

But one wonders what role he has with the exhaustive husbanding of young players who end up on loan, while not being given a chance to breakthrough and create an exciting new dynasty of players at Chelsea. After all, John Terry was once given his chance - why shouldn't he be still there to do the same for another ambitious 18-year-old?