Stop laughing, it's not funny.

Some of you (not those of you on Virgin Media) may watch that Football soap-opera "Dream Team" on the TV, which attempts to completely fabricate and sensationalise the going's on inside a professional football club.


In just one episode of the said programme, you could expect to find the club to be constantly in debt, have players getting arrested, managers getting sacked, a revolving door to the chairman's office, crap players coming on loan from far-off countries, a relegation or two, several heavy defeats, players giving away team details to the opposition, a chairman publicising an ex directors name and address and a captain that doesn't want to play for the club anymore.

Now, you would all dismiss that story plot as ridiculous. No football club is that badly run. Well, almost no club is that badly run.

It was only May 8th 2001 when Leeds United were knocked out of the Champions League semi-final by Juan Sanchez's hand of god. Since then, bad planning by a chairman with the world's largest overdraft, players in the dock and a destructive book written by an inexperienced manager have led to debts mounting up, relegation from the Premier League, with the club now biding their time on the Championship's death row.

All of that would make a fantsatic television programme in itself but after Saturday's defeat to Sheffield Wednesday it emerges that captain Kevin Nicholls, the man who said in Saturday's programme notes “We are all in this together and we believe we’ll get out of this. I’m not just saying it for the sake of it,” wants to dive head first into the lifeboat.

The future is certainly bleak for the club. Even when next season comes around and the wage bill drops dramatically, the club will still have to look behind the sofa and raid the kids piggy banks if they are going to assemble anything resembling a squad for next season. The club have used a staggering 41 players, many of them loan signings and even with the players that are contracted to the club, the overall financial valuation is minimal.

You could say that relegation would be a blessing in disguise. Manchester City suffered a similar fate not too long ago, used the opportunity to rebuilt the club from the foundations upwards and have now cemented themselves as a Premiership club once more.

At Elland Road however, it may be more complex than that. With crowds further dwindling and the financial viability of the club becoming even more questionable, the future looks exceedingly bleak.