The Thing Is: Football - Leeds tops the losers' league to the tune of £80m

Leeds United faces the City next week when the vastly indebted football club finally posts full-year results. It will make grim reading, with debts unchanged at around £80m and pre-tax losses coming in at up to £40m. There are also likely to be grisly provisions for Leeds' revolving-door policy on managers: the total pay-offs for David O'Leary and Terry Venables are estimated to be around £4m.

But the biggest issue will be the refinancing - or the lack of it. A mooted rights issue is not realistic when shares are languishing at 3p and renegotiations with bondholders have stalled. As one analyst wryly observes: "There's nothing for Leeds to refinance."

Yet Leeds is expected to put a gloss on an otherwise terminally gloomy day by unveiling a new chief executive. And not just any chief executive but the former Chelsea boss Trevor Birch, who was recently replaced by Manchester United's Peter Kenyon. The changes look sensible: Mr Kenyon knows about turning financially sound football clubs into global brands while Mr Birch's strengths lie in handling vast amounts of debt. And there is another string to his bow - he is an insolvency expert.

Whether his skills will be put to use, only time will tell. If Leeds avoids relegation, administration is not a foregone conclusion. But refinancing choices are limited. Philip Long of PKF, who is working on the administration of another club, Oldham, says: "The first option has to be some sort of insolvency option - they just cannot keep trading at a loss." However you look at it, Leeds is in a mess.

Whether their plight is indicative of football as a whole is up for debate. Certainly, the City's love affair with all things football is over. One club suffering as a result is Tottenham Hotspur. Earlier this year it optimistically announced plans to raise £10m but these have failed spectacularly - quite simply, no one is interested. The situation has caused a boardroom spat, with the finance director, Paul Viner, finally quitting last week. Full-year results have been repeatedly delayed as management tried to strike a deal; Spurs has until Tuesday to get its results out or fall foul of Stock Exchange rules.

Its situation is still not as dire as Leeds': debt at the half-year point was around £17m and that is likely to be largely unchanged.

Conclusive proof that Leeds' woes really are unique comes in the shape of Sunderland, the final club reporting next week. It was relegated last season but has put its finances in order by selling players and renegotiating wages. Says one analyst: "They actually run it like a business rather than a passion." Mr Birch, take note.