By Stuart Roach

Professor John McKenzie's frustration at securing Leeds United a mere �3m from the sale of Harry Kewell is understandable.

Just four months after accepting Leeds' poisoned chalice, the professor must feel like crying.

McKenzie knew the size of the task he was accepting when he replaced Peter Ridsdale in the Elland Road hot set.

But what he hadn't accounted for was the vulture culture surrounding Leeds' plight.

While Leeds have raised more than �50m in transfer fees over the past 12 months, the true cost of their on-the-field assets has been over �100m.

The club are quite literally paying for mistakes made by the previous regime.

Chasing a Champions League dream was a well-documented gamble that backfired horribly for Leeds.

And the legacy of Ridsdale's most frivolous financial decisions now weigh heavily on McKenzie's shoulders.

Leeds' debts - an estimated �80m - were exacerbated by a series of key financial blunders.

Leeds stumbled chasing a Champions League dream

• Ridsdale made himself the Premiership's highest-paid director with a whopping �600,000 salary in 2001.
• David O'Leary was handed a 10-year contract which eventually cost a potential �4m to tear up.
• Terry Venables was appointed as new highly-paid coach.
• �10m-rated Lee Bowyer and Olivier Dacourt were allowed to run down their contracts and eventually leave for next to nothing.
• Robbie Fowler was signed for �11m then sold for �7m, with Leeds still paying an estimated �500,000 of his annual salary to Manchester City.
• Robbie Keane sold for �7m just 15 months after signing for �12m.
• Seth Johnson signed for �7m on an estimated �37,000 per week and has started only 15 Premiership games in nearly two years.

The key to cleaning up the financial mess caused by Leeds' catalogue of errors has been an effective car boot sale of their players.

ELLAND ROAD EXODUS Rio Ferdinand Signed November 2000, �18m; sold July 2002, �30m) Robbie Keane Signed May 2001, �12m; sold August 2002, �7m Lee Bowyer Signed July 1996, �2.8m; sold January 2003, �100,000) Olivier Dacourt Signed May 2000, �7.2m; sold July 2003 �3.5m. Robbie Fowler Signed November 2001, �11m, sold January 2003, �6m Jonathan Woodgate Trainee, sold January 2003, �9m Harry Kewell Signed December 1995, trainee; sold July 2003, �5m

The club are running out of assets to cash in, yet survival could yet be within Leeds' desperate reach.

Avoiding relegation from the Premiership was crucial and bought the club some time, with the cost of Peter Reid's �500,000 survival bonus a small price to pay.

But the key to their survival could be the attitude of their main backers.

Despite appalling liabilities, no lender is likely to shut down a business which owes them such huge sums.

And the banks and businesses who have lent heavily to the club are likely to make every effort to aid Leeds' bid to meet their obligations.

"Premier League clubs are part of a much more important whole," football author Kevin Mousley told BBC Sport.

He added: "The banks and the people to whom Leeds owe money are much better off receiving whatever it is they receive through a going concern, rather than trying to close it down and not be able to get their money back altogether.

"It's one of the reasons that Chelsea were able to limp on as they did before Roman Abramovich came in.

"When a bank is looking at closing down a business, it has to look at maximising its return on its investment and very often that means keeping the club going.

"Whatever the massive debt that Leeds owe, in the long run the people that are owed money realise that it is still a Premier League club that will attract 30 or 40,000 people every other Saturday and still has players who are assets.

Alan Smith is one of Leeds' few remaining assets

"It would be something incredibly extreme before a club would be closed down and I can't see the out-of-business signs going up at Leeds just yet."

Leeds' commitment to repayment is likely to be based heavily on annual lump sums funded by the summer windfall generated by season ticket sales, an area in which the club remain healthy.

That will add to the sale of players which has raised more than �50m in the last 12 months alone.

And fans' concerns that the figure appears to have made little impact on the estimated debt can be tempered by the fact that most of those sales will not be shown until the next set of published accounts.

Even those figures will not include the sales of Kewell and Jonathan Woodgate, so Leeds' debts will reduce gradually over the next 12 months, barring any ill-advised transfer market gambles.

Strikers Mark Viduka and Alan Smith and goalkeeper Paul Robinson may yet have to be sacrificed and the loosening of the stranglehold on the club is likely to be a slow release.

But Leeds fans should at least take some comfort in the knowledge that their survival hopes are not going the same way as their players.