Clubs are winning survival fight

"This point of the year is also when clubs are most financially stretched. All we can say from the evidence is that the financial collapse we were expecting has not happened."

The Premiership was never likely to be affected by the problems which have hit lower League clubs here and in Scotland.

The collapse of the League's £315 million three-year deal with ITV Digital might have alarmed the Premiership's fat cats eyeing their next TV deal with Sky but the immediate pressure was felt by the First Division clubs who have spent a fortune trying to join the elite.

They are the ones who are still most at risk and it is a shock that other First Division teams have not followed Bradford's example and taken their club into administration. At least the pressure eased last week when Sky signed a £95m four-year deal with the Football League to pick up the television rights. Despite this welcome respite, it is staggering that more clubs haven't taken the opportunity to unburden themselves of the costly wages of their leading stars.

The PFA's official list has got just 643 players on it this year compared with 610 last year.

There are a few well-known names on it - Bjarne Goldbaek at Fulham, Andy Roberts at Wimbledon, Chris Armstrong at Tottenham and Republic of Ireland World Cup hero Gary Breen at Coventry City. There's also Ronny Johnsen at Manchester United, Shaka Hislop and Paul Kitson at West Ham, Stuart Ripley at Southampton and Chelsea's 21-year-old defender Danny Slatter. But the vast majority are little-known players at the start of their careers who are out of contract or ageing professionals who might have hoped to squeeze another well-paid season out of their tired legs.

It would be easy to draw the conclusion that clubs are in better shape than they thought they would be and have kept more players on than they expected to.

But the Benito Carbone episode at Bradford - he had loan spells at Derby and Middlesbrough last season before finally being released by the club in May - shows how hard it is for clubs to get rid of highly paid players they don't want

Failed attempts to persuade the PFA to change its position on honouring contracts means teams can only release those players whose contracts are up. The true test, says Millwall chairman Theo Paphitis, will come when we know how many players out of contract have been offered new deals.

He said: "Players have got contracts and it's impossible to just release them.

"Clubs have been releasing everyone out of contract and they are the ones who are going to struggle to find new clubs.

"It's not about how many are released, it's about how many are employed again. The other measure is the transfer market. No one is buying new players."

And Paphitis warned: "There are a lot of clubs in serious financial difficulty. People are literally hanging on, waiting to see what the new TV deal brings and whether we win the court case (concerning ITV Digital). The alternative is too horrible to contemplate."

But is this just club chairmen talking up the hard times?

League chairman Keith Harris doesn't think so.

He said: "We believe the current situation is pretty much in keeping with what we were expecting. It's pretty close I would say.

"One of the obvious ways of measuring the financial crisis is how many clubs are actually in administration.

"So far we haven't seen that many but I do know there are a lot who are contemplating what to do."