It is scarcely an encouraging sign when a footballer’s best performance of the season came while miming to a 1970s pop song on a video.

When the player in question is one of the most distinguished defenders of his generation, one noted for a rare elegance on the footballing field, it is particularly sad.

Rio Ferdinand has sufficient experience in front of the cameras that he could play his part when the QPR squad – or those of them familiar with the song, anyway – entertained themselves to the tune of rock band Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody. Shaun Wright-Phillips was more exuberant, but he has played even less football than Ferdinand this season. He had even more reason to make the most of a rare appearance.

The former England captain, the man who captained Manchester United in their 2008 Uefa Champions League final victory, played his second game in 13 weeks on Sunday. This will be his final season, and there is a chance Sunday’s match proves to be Ferdinand’s last game of professional football.

It was not so much because QPR lost 3-0 at home to a third-tier team, even if Sheffield United are one of League One’s most accomplished sides and experienced giant-killers. Nor even is it a question of Ferdinand’s diffident defending for United’s opener, neither closing down Louis Reed nor tracking Marc McNulty’s scoring run as Ferdinand lingered in no-man’s land.

Rather, it cemented the impression that Rangers cannot risk Ferdinand against anyone anymore; that signing him was needlessly nostalgic and that Harry Redknapp’s “old pals act” has backfired; that a legend is now a liability.

As they became the second Premier League team to be eliminated from the FA Cup, and by a side 50th in the league ladder, it took Ferdinand’s record in a QPR shirt to seven defeats and a solitary win in nine appearances. QPR have conceded 21 goals with him on the pitch, an average of 2.3 per game.

Redknapp began the season by changing his tactics to accommodate Ferdinand, positioning him at the heart of a back three. It did not work. One centre-back had to make way. Initially, it was Richard Dunne.

But while the aged Irishman was never in Ferdinand’s class and is less than a year his junior, he has proved more dependable and more resilient. It can seem illogical, but the passing of time has been kinder to Dunne, forever seemingly exhausted but nonetheless still defiant.

Now Ferdinand is, at best, QPR’s fourth-choice centre-back, behind his fellow veteran plus Steven Caulker, and Nedum Onuoha. Another 36-year-old defender, Clint Hill, could even rank ahead of him.

His campaign has been defined by on-field failures and off-field headlines. Ferdinand contrived to incur a suspension for using crude slang on Twitter, even if the Jamaican term was unknown to most. His September autobiography, complete with its criticisms of David Moyes, was entitled, Twitter-style, #2Sides.

It was beyond parody; Ferdinand had progressed beyond the established confines of the English language to needlessly incorporate a pointless hashtag. In that respect, he has provided reminders of a former England teammate whose idiosyncracies, earlier success and colossal self-belief blinded him to signs of his decay in his game.

Ferdinand spent 12 years at United before leaving for a lesser club, in QPR. David Seaman spent 13 at Arsenal before going to mid-table Manchester City. Both had been protected by a higher calibre of teammates. When exposed in struggling sides, they floundered.

Seaman eventually retired in 2004, eight months after he ought to have done, after an embarrassing stint at City, where he was culpable for an absurd amount of goals. At least he did not suffer the ignominy of being dropped by relegation strugglers, as Ferdinand has been.

Truth be told, the signs have been clear for quite some time. He recovered from his evisceration at the hands of Gareth Bale in September 2012 to enjoy an excellent second half in Alex Ferguson’s final season.

Moyes initially installed him as an automatic choice, but he seemed to lose faith after September 2013’s Manchester derby thrashing. Ferdinand was too slow, the defence was dragged too deep.

There was something endearing, but scarcely credible, about his last fine display. As Moyes’s mediocre side held Bayern Munich in April, it proved the final hurrah of the old firm of Ferdinand and Nemanja Vidic, Old Trafford’s greatest centre-back partnership but now both enduring indignities in their post-United careers.

The Englishman was omitted for the return leg. Grave as the disappointment was, for the sake of his dignity, he ought to have retired when leaving United. Miming along to Slade threatens to be the least embarrassing part of his QPR career.

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