Birch has done a brilliant job in avoiding administration so far AND keeping the squad together. However, I don't know whether he has enough in the bag to stop the creditors pulling the plug this Friday. Even worse, the current squad and management only have the slimmest of chances of avoiding relegation. Almost certainly, the heroic efforts to avoid administration now will make the collapse when it does come even more traumatic: - the players will have had another half a season to show to potential bidders they are not good enough, - more chance for one or more players to pick up an injury which makes them non-sellable during the summer, - at the beginning of December, I thought it inconceivable that Leeds would disappear altogether, now I am not so sure... - going into administration in the summer means that there won;t be 20,000 season ticket holders sitting there as unsecured creditors. The prospect of having the fans as creditors was perversely one of Leeds best hopes of survival. If the fans are not part of the equation because they have had their money's worth of 19 home matches, the moneymen behind the scenes will have more freedom to swing the axe.

This is as intelligent and reasoned an interview you are likely to get from a football manager and it happens to have been given by Souness. I would be fascinated to know just what particular incident or observation prompted each of Jan, jim and 6 to become so rabidly anti-Souness.

This is the most pessimistic article about Leeds (and football in general). My guess is that Trevor Birch has done enough to get his reprieve from the creditors for the club to the end of the season. If the Administrators are called into Leeds today, I have to say that things are so bad that Leeds' disappearance as a football club begins to look a real possibility- and that has been something I have previously dismissed. However, if the real debts are £135m or bigger, there is £75m of creditor pressure which only has an interest in being paid as opposed to £60m of American creditor pressure to keep the club going in a shape which would repay debts from gate money over the next 25 years.

The BBC's latest take on the Leeds situation. There is no doubt that the players have the club's fate in their pockets and at the moment are doing the club no favours. Man City are tabling Leeds' failure to honour £10K per week payments to Robbie Fowler at today's Premiership meeting.

This really has the feel of the end- debts figures spiralling upwards, doing a deal with ManU to trade the £3.25m outstanding on the Ferdinand transfer fee for £1.5m on Thursday etc. The players are so thick, they screwed themselves. Had they taken the 30% pay cut when it was "offered", Birch would have got his standstill to the end of the season last Friday and the club would have limped on- maybe even saved themselves from relegation and the players made themselves marketable again. As it is they have been brough kicking and screaming to accept a 35% pay cut which now won't be enough to save the club. Of course, the administrator will say thank you very much for the pay cut boys and will immediately look to terminate everyone outside the 16 he needs for the next game.

What a surprise! The £20m from the Leeds consortium is not so real after all. Looks like the players are going to forego their 35% which could keep the club out of administration but still watch out for Leeds desperately selling anyone they can on Friday.

Looks like Leeds havegot a four day extension which almost sees them through to the end of the trasfer deadline. The £20m bid seems to be sufficiently real to have bought the extra time.

I have just seen the most convincing argument yet for keeping Souness,

BBC's latest summation on Leeds. It does not look good for them.

I puzzled over that one and concluded the Grauniad had erred. There is a provision for giving employees preference over the Crown where a company is so bankrupt there is almost literally nothing in the kitty. In that case, the employees receive a figure based on job seeker allowance before any taxes get paid. I don't think this features too highly in anyone's thinking about Leeds. My guess is that the Revenue have recognised that the surest way of getting their £8m is by letting a football entertainment continue at Leeds- that is probably where this comment has come from. However, they are most certain to get their money from a football-operating administrator than from Trevor Birch and the only reason they haven't pulled the plug is because there would be a political backlash to them doing so. A Guardian articleon how pathetic the Leeds players are.

The end is nigh. Whether the last ditch consortium with £20m can find a credible way to cover a NOW £100M+ hole or it is administration, to ask for a 48 hour extension when all previous talk was about a two week extension after today's deadline passed, this now looks like the end of this particular chapter. Stand by for frenetic transfer activity on Wednesday and Thursday.

Knock 30% off then another 20% for the certainty of being paid and he might take £10K a week as being worth the same as what he might be getting at Leeds this week but quite possibly not next week....

One week lifeline with only a two week extension provided certain financial conditions are met- Leeds are, as Trevor Birch put it, on a precipice. They have failed every challenge put to them four weeks ago: -no buyer -no reduction in costs -no capital injection through an asset sale -no new mamagerial impetus. Birch has done very well to avoid the plug being pulled today. Doubt is being cast on the players' willingness to forego 30% of their wages- only three have publicly come out and said they would do it despite the bullish noises coming out of the PFA. Roll up, roll up, Leeds have got to find £5m by next Monday- which players do we want?

Gordon- oops!

Still no news from Leeds about what is happening whilst their share price slides downwards. However, Skysports report Graham Taylor as saying a pay cut has been agreed with the Leeds players. Both Fenerbahce and Besiktas have expressed interest in taking Viduka although Leeds are resisting....at the moment.

When there is this amount of brinkmanship there is a real possibility that Leeds will go into administration today. Note the BBC report that Leeds' debts are now up at £83m- they have lost another £3m in the last month. Anything other than a football club would have been decently buried by now. As currently structured, there simply isn't anything at Elland Road that makes any sort of business sense whatsoever.

Stu, the only way Leeds are going to find the £80m they owe with some degree of certainty is from cutting their costs. If they bring their salaries down from over £40m a year to under £10m a year they can do it and it will not matter that they have lost £20m income through no longer being in the Prem. This is way beyond the point of sentimentality- either the club does it or the creditors do it for them by appointing an administrator. It looks like Leeds have grown tired of the non-appearing sheikh and are taking matters into their own hands. The Evening Standard are reporting that Leeds have told their players that the £5m they need to get to the end of the season will be raised either through a 30% pay cut (deferrment) or enough of them will be sold off to find the money that way. Interesting to read the PFA web site saying Leeds have been saved to the end of the season.

I believe that the 'deadline' of tomorrow was just a date pickied by the Leeds board in some, seemingly, misguided attempt to try and get some rich arab/russian/or whatever to invest in a football club they know nothing about. I dont believe the creditors are pushing for administration as it would mean that any chance they had left of staying up (and therefore being able to pay some money back rather than implode) would disappear with the sale of the likes of Smith, Robinson et al. stuwilky, you couldn't be more wrong. Leeds had to come up with about £5m in cash to meet payments falling due in mid-December. They couldn't find the money and went grovelling to their creditors to beg for more time to pay. They were given four weeks which are up tomorrow. It appears the creditors have gone soft again and will give Leeds another week or two to find the money. If I were a creditor of Leeds United, I would tell them to sell ALL their players right now and get as much cash as they can for them, bring in new ones earning at most 25% the last lot were on and know that there is a fan base large and loyal enough which can re-pay my debts and interest after the incidentals of rumnning the football club. If the Directors of the Football Club will not do that, put in an Administrator who will. Why do I need Premiership football to pay off my debts? I know that a perfectly good First Division outfit can be run for well under £20m a year. Gate receipts at Leeds in Div 1 would still be £20m a year, commercial activities would still rake in £10-15m a year and I could trouser the Premiership parachute payment of £5m Remember, most of the debts are to American financiers and that is exactly how they will look at it.

The latest Leeds situation from the BBC. No saviours but enough poisonous imponderables in the alternatives for Trevor Birch to be given the chance for LUFCplc to limp on.

Several sources are speculating that the creditors are giving Birch two more weeks to save the club. Interesting that they are no longer saying "sell" the club- the verb used when the four weeks were given begore Christmas. I would guess that Birch will by now have found the weakness in every creditor, talked in gloomy terms about the cost of an administrator and the near certainty of relegation through punitive Prem League action if they went into administration to have stayed the execution. He will for certain have had to convince the creditors of some certainty of payments which almost certainly means he is succeding in persuading the player to take a pay-cut of between 20-30%. He also is sure to be selling one or more players. Interesting to read that Celtic are in for Michael Bridges- I wonder if Chris Sutton might be available after all. Perhaps Willcox is affordable after a 30% pay cut? Millner certainly seems to have all the bad and the ugly chasing to sign him so I think the Rovers would struggle to get him.

My recollection is that Leeds do not own Elland Road but have a long lease on it. I guess they are looking to sell the lease for alternative use. They will probably end up ground sharing with the dingles. In fact this could be a clever move by Birch. The Americans might not have had the foresight to specify the size of the stadium when they signed up for 25 years' of gate and season ticket receipts. If that is the case, Birch could have found his point of leverage on the Americans as moving to a much smaller stadium would potentially scupper their security. They would not win a Court case to prevent Leeds from doing that if Birch and his insolvency advisers could show that they sold the lease to ensure the club's survival by acting in the interests of all creditors. Even though the shiekh's £35m is turning into a desert mirage, this is the first piece of news which makes me think that Leeds might have a remote chance of coming through. However, it is still odds on a fire sale of players this month.

The stock market is a joke. The one thing that the Shiekh is quoted as saying is that he does not want any money to go to the guys who put Leeds in the mess they are in. IF (big if), the £35m is for real, £18m has to go to creditors before the summer (do you think the Revenue will forego 1p of their >£8m entitlement to the 40% of millionaire footballer wages?- neither do I). In all these things, that £18m is certain to be an under-estimate- he'll be lucky if the true figure isn't nearer £25m. That leaves £10m to £15m to spend on players' transfer money and buy out the shareholders. So tell me, when the sheikh says to the shareholders, every penny I give to you reduces the cash I can spend on players, how much are Leeds shares worth? The true share value of Leeds United plc is zero per share.

jim, that is either an incredible scoop by The Independent or they have bought the Sheikh's eye wash. This is the Guardian's article on the Leeds situation and the Times and Telegraph are similarly pessimistic. Birch being in Manchester talking to insolvency specialists doesn't tally with the Sheikh's offer or perhaps he was being prudent. If the Sheikh is going to make a £35m cash injection and bid for all the shares at the same time (presumably for a penny each), all he has done is take over the priviledge of paying off the rest of the £50m of debts- £60m if he is going to spend on players in the transfer window. It is not a rescue but a standstill and nobody other than a fanatic would touch contributing to such a scheme. Under the Sheikh, Leeds would survive the remainder of the season paying the creditors falling due and they might avoid relegation this summer, but that would be about it. Their economic fundamentals would still look the weakest in the Prem by far with a relegation dog fight against a backdrop of continuing financial crises the best they could hope for next season.

Different creditors, different interests. Given the creditors effectively control whether there is an administration or not and therefore have a big clout over the administrator, the creditors probably see some value in spinning this one out to make sure they get the deal they want BEFORE the administrator goes in. So long as someone kicks a ball round Elland Road for the next 25 years, the yanks will get their £60m back through their lien on gate money and season ticket sales. The mortgage boys from Jersey will probably assume effective control over the contracts of the players they have mortgages on. The Inland Revenue who are now owed £7m are the wild card. I guess Trevor Birch has allowed that debt to happen as it creates the wild card which doesn't make administration a pushover for the yanks and mortgage boys.

The bidding is open, Newcastle have just had an offer of £2m for Smith turned down. Elsewhere, it is generally acceoted that Leeds will not be sold and that they need £5m by Monday. This Sporting Life article is the best one I have read- the points deduction situation is as clear as mud. Perhaps Birch is deliberately muddying the waters to make the bondholders nervous about precipitate action.