HARTY: On the future of football

Or has the obscenity of it all just been saved for another time and another place?

Regardless of the fact that I have an affinity to the blue half of Manchester, to my mind obscene is not an understatement. How can a city like Mancheste, with its large working-class population, and now with the credit crunch and serious economic and employment problems, have within its boundaries an organisation prepared to pay an individual an alleged 500,000 per week?

It almost harps back to the days of Marie Antoinette and "let them eat cake", and however much money the owners of Manchester City allegedly have, those kind of wages are both unjustified, and in the long run, I believe, unstatianable.

With the dire financial situation still ongoing, I only hope that at some point in the very near future football wakes-up and smells the coffee, otherwise it's going to take a huge casualty to bring the higher reaches of the beautiful game to its senses.

If you believe some financial analysts, if the recession continues for the next 12 months, possibly a third of the football league clubs could have their banks call-in their outstanding debts and then the inevitable administrations would follow.

Imagine the Football League starting next August with at least a dozen or so clubs on minus 10 or 15 points before a ball had been kicked...

It would make a mockery of the competition. On Tuesday the Albion entertained Luton Town in the JPT Southern Final 1st Leg, and talking to one of my media counterparts from Bedfordshire it could already be happening.

The Hatters have had a desperate season brought about by the unprecedented 30 point deduction from the Football League. Manager Mick Harford deserves more than just a medal as he has set about putting a side together who now have finally gone into the realms of a positive points total, although still 17 points from safety.

This situation is compounded by the fact that it's believed there are other sides on the brink of administration.

So then go full circle and look at last week, and however good, or even great, a player Kaka is, how can we have our domestic game such poles apart?

One of the great things about supporting the Albion for almost 36 years is that it's helped me forge friendships with people I might not have necessarily come into contact with outside football.

"People's poet" John Baine, aka Attila the Stockbroker, is one such person, but my Tuesday night phone-in show highlighted that it truly is a game of opinions.

Despite being employed by the club as one of the match day announcers John opened up my show by criticising not only the Albion performance '“ "spineless" was his opening gambit'“ but then advocated that manager Micky Adams' time was up.

He commented that going back 15 years or so to my days as a fanzine editor, had the Albion been in a similar situation I would have been shouting for the removal of the manager as much as he was.

He's probably right, but then perhaps times change, and without wishing to adopt an "I know something that you don't" mentality, I still believe that changing the manager at this point of the season would be a retrograde step.

The supporters who pay their money have every right to voice their opinions and I will always champion that right, but I also believe that none of us know the full set of current circumstances at the club and what Adams has to contend with off the field.

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