After Leicester, survival is the only goal

Fight for life itself overtakes the pursuit of promotion as the lessons of football's new economics start to hit home

In football terms, it was an absurdly brief walk from Filbert Street to Queer Street. A little more than two years. That's all it has taken to move from those halcyon days when Peter Taylor's team were in the Uefa Cup and around the summit of the Premiership to now, when the club and staff suffer the consequences of Leicester City placing themselves in the hands of the administrator.

Probably, among all the clubs who are supported by rickety props rather than solid foundations, City have provided the most salutory demonstration of the financial malaise afflicting football. Hence the reason recent tremors have not been restricted to Manchester and the West Midlands, with fault lines spreading wide. At Leic-ester they are principally being attributed to questionable buys by Taylor, indifferent performances culminating in relegation, the construction of the new Walkers Stadium and the collapse of the ITV Digital deal. It leaves the Foxes reportedly £50m in debt, with creditors scenting blood.

For the moment, the priority is survival at a time when the administrator seems a considerably greater influence on affairs than the gaffer, or whatever term the players have for manager Micky Adams. This weekend the consortium headed by their former player Gary Lineker are still bullish about raising the £5m or so required as an initial rescue package as the metaphorical tin cans are rattled. Another former player, Emile Heskey, sold to Liverpool for £11m, has pledged a contribution.

A rival group have also apparently expressed an interest. But Jon Holmes, Lineker's long-time friend and agent, and a member of the consortium, said: "We'll just have to wait and see whether this other group materialises and whether they're reasonable people, but it's certainly not helpful. Obviously if somebody came in who had every chance of success we would stand aside. But if this gets competitive it would make it worse from the club's point of view."

He added: "We're getting a good level of interest and we're hopeful that we can pull it off. Emile Heskey's gesture was incredible. I was staggered by it. I know he's a nice lad, but it's a real heart-warming story."

Yet, just as Derby County, Coventry, Ipswich, Bradford City, Watford, Barnsley and Wimbledon – all relegated from the Premiership in the last two or three years – have found, it will require considerably more than a group of benefactors and concerned supporters (who have been promised a representative on the board if they can raise £1.5m) to establish the club as a viable concern once again.

Leicester supporters will not thank you for suggesting it, but the club probably over-extended not just financially, but on the field, too, because of Martin O'Neill's remarkable achievements, which, you suspected, would prove extremely difficult for another manager to replicate. His tenure led to expectation becoming unrealistic.

Adams has done well, in the circumstances, to place Leic-ester in proximity to the First Division leaders, Portsmouth. But would promotion back to the Premiership be the panacea that everyone forecasts, or would it merely create another predicament – namely expensive signings and big wages just to maintain Leicester's status?

It is an intriguing question to put to Holmes, who, wearing his business hat, is managing director of SFX Sports Europe, whose agents negotiate players' salaries (if the consortium succeed, he would not be a Leicester director, however, because of a possible conflict of interests).

"Clearly if that happens we're going to look closely at shorter-term contracts; perhaps contracts with big incentive bonuses," he replied. "If people are successful, they should be paid well. I have absolutely no problem with that. It's like the agents who work for me. They do very well – if they make the money. But I'm not a believer that you should overpay players in a situation where they're not performing."

He adds: "In football generally a lot of big questions have to be asked now. The clubs who are in trouble are those trying to get to the higher level, and if they fall off that they're in trouble. Is that a good way to run the game? I don't know. We want it to be competitive, but the logical conclusion is that the strong get much stronger and the weak get weaker."

Essentially, the Football Association, Football League and Professional Footballers' Association must come to an agreement about a structure which would make the impact of relegation from the Premiership less traumatic. Although a golden parachute already exists, a much softer landing is required.

Certainly, shorter contracts would diminish the problem, but how acceptable would they be to the players and their agents, not all of whom have the same farsightedness – and, it must be said, personal interest in a particular club – as Holmes?

For the moment, Leicester are not alone in having a squad containing players earning well over £20,000 a week. The better ones, like Muzzy Izzet, may be sold to a Premiership club when the transfer window opens in January, but for the others it is a matter of waiting until their contracts expire.

If Lineker and Co do succeed in their bid – and there is disquiet in some quarters that the proposed consortium includes both Greg Clarke and Martin George, chairmen of Leicester City plc and its football club subsidiary when the administrator was called in – the club would revert to private ownership. The concept of the football plc, once so much in vogue, has suddenly become as unfashionable as a mullet hairstyle.

"Football clubs need to be run in a business-like manner by professional people," said Holmes. "You can't run them like charities. But as for the people backing them, that's different. The whole idea of the clubs going public gave people the idea that they could make money out of them, getting something for nothing, and that doesn't happen."

The irony is that, far from desiring to profit from it, Lineker and Holmes would rather be completely divorced from the ownership of the club. "In an ideal world you wouldn't want to have to get involved," said Lineker, who, nevertheless, has strong views on the future of football outside the Premiership.

"I don't think there's any question that clubs are re-evaluating the way they operate," he said. "Wages have clearly spiralled out of control. All of a sudden you're not seeing clubs pay massive amounts of money for players. It's suddenly hit rock bottom as clubs are coming to terms with the situation. It's been a bit late for one or two, but it had to happen. Clubs will be run on much tighter budgets now. They won't be able to gamble on buying players to get promotion. They'll just have to go on what they've got in the league that they're in. It's just a question of survival."

And that's his message as he seeks sources of new money. Meanwhile football, as an industry, must find a way of ensuring that such acts of philanthropy can be consigned to the past.