INEQUALITY: PFA chief Gordon Taylor feels too much money goes to the peak of the pyramid in professional football

The World Cup in Asia was a huge success but domestically wrangles over television finance have seen storm clouds gather over the English game. Evening Telegraph soccer writer ANDY NEILD discovers from PFA chief executive why we have no reason to worry

We're not facing

football meltdown!

Players' chief Taylor refuses to buy the Doomsday scenario

AFTER all the euphoria surrounding the World Cup, football has never been more popular.

But the feel-good factor generated by events in Japan and Korea is showing signs of evaporating as financial uncertainty clouds the build-up to the new domestic season.

After a decade of spiralling wages, mega transfer fees and blockbuster TV deals, football's gravy train is showing signs of derailing, with clubs the length and breadth of the country set to feel the pinch as a result.

Bradford City went into administration this summer. Watford are exploring the possibility of selling their Vicarage Road ground in order to avert financial disaster.

And Leicester City were forced to announce to the stock market earlier this week that they plan to sell players and slash the wages of those who remain as it struggles to cope with a serious cash shortage.

Amazingly, each of the above three clubs have all been members of the Premiership at some point during the last three years, which adds weight to Arsene Wenger's theory that the game is in the midst of a deep depression.

Compare that to this time last year when Manchester United signed Juan Sebastian Veron for a British record transfer fee of £28.1million -- a deal which took last summer's spending among the 20 Premiership clubs to a whopping £156 million.

A year on, not even half that figure has been spent by worried Premiership chairmen who are tightening their belts amid fears of the worst cash crisis in football history.

So far, Manchester City are the only club to have spent more than £20million on players this summer.

And, of the sides finishing in the top six last term, only Liverpool have spent more than £10million.

But it's not just big-money transfers that have slowed down, merchandising and sponsorship have also been in decline, too.

Manchester United might have announced a whopping £300m kit deal with Nike earlier this week, but even the world's richest club are experiencing difficulties as the closure of their official merchandise shop in Dublin demonstrates.

To put it bluntly, the majority of clubs are simply not prepared to make the big-money risks of the past and all this on the back of the most exciting and entertaining World Cup in decades.

At the heart of the problem is all the uncertainty surrounding TV money.

Twelve months ago, Premiership chairmen were rubbing their hands with glee after signing a whopping £1.65billion TV deal -- by far the biggest in the league's history.

However, after watching the recent collapse of ITV Digital and the knock-on effect it has had on the clubs in the Nationwide League, analysts fear the next deal to be negotiated in two years' time will be for a significantly lower amount.

So is our national game in melt-down or is all this talk of Doomsday scenarios purely scare-mongering in the tabloid Press?

"People talk of Doomsday scenarios but Doomsday scenarios were the Eighties when we had all the hooligan problems," said PFA chief executive Gordon Taylor, whose association recently stepped in to save Bradford from the brink of extinction.

"That's when we were going to have id cards, grounds closed, railings up, pitches fenced off and supporters frog-marched to the station.

"That was a real difficult period for the game, with the nadir being Heysel, so at the moment it's really difficult to say we have a Doomsday scenario when there is so much money about in the game.

"The problem is the inequality of the distribution of that money and we are on a bit of a dangerous slope with all the money going to the peak of the pyramid because we've got to be careful we don't erode the base."

By that, Taylor is referring to the financial disparity which exists between the Football League's renegotiated £35 million-a-season TV deal with Sky and the Premiership's whopping £500 million-a-year contract with the satellite channel.

As a result, the rich have got richer while the rest have been left playing catching up -- a situation which is only going to exacerbate the already yawning gap between the Premiership and the Nationwide League.

"The Premier League has created a bit of a financial monster in so much as clubs are spending money they simply haven't got to try and get in it," said Taylor.

"And then when they get there, they continue to spend money to try to stay there.

"As a result, when they do slip back down they face financial disaster and we are starting to see a similar pattern developing.

"We had Queens Park Rangers, then Portsmouth, then Crystal Palace, then Sheffield Wednesday and now we've got Watford and Bradford who've suddenly found they've overreached and they're not in good shape, financially.

"Watford, for example, are selling their ground and trying to lease it back which is a big asset gone.

"So they've been on to us for help and Notts County are now talking about going into administration, too."

Inevitably, the knock-on effect will hit the players and agents hardest.

ITV Digital's collapse with £178m still owed to the Football League was a financial disaster for the 72 Nationwide clubs and that is a sign of things to come in the Premiership.

But this financial squeeze is not exclusive to England, however, as the rest of the European football world is also experiencing a recession.

In Italy, for instance, World Cup hero Ronaldo, the game's hottest property, has agreed to take a 10 per cent pay cut at Inter together with Italian forward Christian Vieri and Uruguayan Alvaro Recoba in a bid to help the club's cash flow.

And even the mighty Real Madrid are starting to feel the financial pinch having recently agreed to sell off their training ground to pay off some debts.

PFA chief Taylor is not surprised the bubble is starting to burst, however.

During his fight for a greater slice of TV money for his association last year, he predicted then that the boom would not last.

"I don't like saying 'I told you so' but it's my job to look ahead and one of the reasons we were determined to get a fair share of TV money was because we felt the TV companies were going past their mark," said Taylor.

"I don't think we are a country like America who can cope with so many TV channels.

"By that I'm not saying we are techno-phobes but there's a limit to how much football you can watch, even if you're a great lover of the game.

"I used to feel terrible if I missed a game but now it's becoming physically impossible to keep up with everything.

"So I just felt if we are not careful then we'll end up killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.

"On the other hand, I still expected Carlton and Granada to honour their contract because they are getting bonuses from the government which could well amount to well over a billion for going digitalised.

"So to try and cut themselves off from that umbilical cord by saying they were not responsible for ITV Digital is really stretching the imagination."

So what next for the 'greatest game in the world'?

Maybe the recent belt-tightening in the game was the short, sharp shock necessary to stop football from spiralling out of control altogether.

Taylor has witnessed many crises before in his role as the player's chief.

And he believes the game is more than equipped to ride out the current storm.

"I've faced all these Doomsday scenarios before," said Taylor.

"I remember in the 1960s when Bill Ridding, the Bolton manager at the time, said the game would be gone in five years after the removal of the maximum wage.

"But, ironically, five years later we actually won the World Cup and the game began to boom because it was attracting a lot more people than it would have done otherwise.

"And the same scenario was painted over the Bosman situation when people claimed it would spell the end of the transfer system and clubs would fold.

"But the game continues to evolve, whatever seems to happen around it."