By Bill Wilson BBC News Online business reporter

The recent decision by Sunderland Plc to cancel its listing on the London Stock Exchange from 5 August is the latest sign that buying shares in football clubs is for die-hard fans only.

Many clubs that floated in the heady days of the mid-to-late 1990s now find themselves worth a small fraction of their original flotation price.

Shares in Aston Villa, for example, were floated at �11 in 1997 and are now worth 296p.

Meanwhile Aberdeen, Bolton Wanderers (Burnden Leisure) and Chelsea (Chelsea Village) have delisted - the latter being taken over by Roman Abramovich - while Leeds United's holding company went into receivership.

Sunderland chairman Bob Murray pointed to a lack of potential to raise funds in the City in the near future, and claimed only Manchester United was suited to a stock market listing.

With a lot of the club listings it was only the supporters who initially bought the shares, in order to feel they were backing their team - but it hasn't made fortunes for any of them Michael Stirling, Field Fisher Waterhouse

The problems for clubs appear to have been over-valuation on flotation, the dotcom crash, and other factors like high player wages.

Many of the football companies failed to clamp down on player wages (although pay growth has slowed recently), and also failed to deliver the hoped-for profits from digital media as quickly or as handsomely as was once expected.

Projected takeovers of clubs by media outlets also failed to materialise. Six years ago Manchester United, Aston Villa, Arsenal, Newcastle United, Liverpool and Leeds United were all named as possible targets for television or cable firms.

Player wages

Dr Adam Brown is senior research fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University, specialising in sport, and is co-author of Not For Sale: Manchester United, Murdoch And The Defeat Of BSkyB.

The former member of government's Football Task Force says: "There was a rush to float, and the interests of supporters and football as a whole was never taken into account.

Chelsea (blue) have gone private while Newcastle United remain listed

"Football shares were overvalued on flotation, and a lot of people thought they were going to make huge profits.

"But television revenues went straight into players' wages, which wasn't originally predicted.

"Player wages are still exorbitant. There are still clubs with debts that are paying pretty average players wages like �30,000 a week.

"Is it then surprising that individuals and institutions do not want to invest in football clubs? So the share prices have slumped and remained low."

Richest club

"On the other hand the issue of television rights has not panned out as was originally envisaged back then, with the clubs' ownership of their own match day rights not coming to fruition," says Dr Brown.

"Running alongside the television issue, there was the crash following the dotcom boom. Clubs' plans to stream all their games on their websites into fans' living rooms have not happened as they thought back in the late 1990s."

So the money raised from match days has also remained centrally important to clubs, when they had thought that other income streams would provide for them.

Clubs with listed shares Aston Villa Birmingham City Celtic Charlton Athletic Heart of Midlothian Manchester United Manchester City - Ofex Millwall (Holdings) Newcastle United Preston North End Rangers - Ofex Sheffield United Southampton (Leisure) Sunderland (until 05/08/04) Tottenham Hotspur Watford (Leisure) West Bromwich Albion

"Manchester United's biggest income is still from match day - tickets and catering and other sales. It is more than TV rights or merchandising, although the figures are quite close now as they the club is getting around �25m a year from its Nike deal."

Even United, the world's richest football club, saw its shares fall from 400p in March 2000 to 100p in September 2002, before recovering to today's 253p.

But there always remains the possibility of a takeover by Michael Glazer, or the Irish horse racing duo John Magnier and JP McManus, all of whom raised their shareholdings this year.

However, there appears little interest, institutional or otherwise, in the shares of other listed clubs like Newcastle United, Aston Villa, Celtic and Hearts.

Newcastle United announced its flotation price at 135p seven years ago, and is now bumping along at just 42p. And Celtic shares are now around 61p compared with the 280p they were priced at six years ago.

'Over-valued'

Michael Stirling is head of pricing strategies, as part of the sports analysis team, at law firm Field Fisher Waterhouse.

He said: "The problem is that the stocks were over-valued when they were floated.

"Many of the clubs were listed when the stock market was doing better than it is now. If you look at the clubs that listed at the time, like Celtic, their shares are less than a quarter of what they were in 1998.

"And someone like Newcastle is very much a regional club that does not have the global pull of a Manchester United. Also people in the region might not have a great deal of spare money to spend on club shares.