FOOTBALL clubs are heading for financial ruin and it is all down to club chairmen.

Don't blame the players for earning vast sums or the managers for wanting the highest paid players in their team. Blame the chairmen for bowing to the players' and managers' demands and putting the future of their clubs at risk.

Bradford, Derby, Leeds, Leicester and York are in big trouble of going bust and others like Chelsea are tens of millions of pounds in debt.

Reports have suggested between 20 and 50 of the 92 Premiership and Football League clubs will go out of existence unless they change their spending habits.

It is all due to an inability or an unwillingness among club chairmen to perform the first rule of business and balance the books.

The buck stops with the chairmen who go into the job as successful businessmen and proceed to lose every ounce of their financial acumen the second they sit in the big chair on the end of the football clubs' directors table.

There are the exceptions like here at Bolton where Phil Gartside tries to run the club like a business with little basic rules like balancing expenditure with income.

That attitude only extends to a few clubs, more's the pity, while the rest are quite happy to spend money they haven't got.

The vast majority of Premiership clubs' turnover goes in players' wages, sparking warning signals last year that many are going the same way as Watford, Palace, Swindon, Bradford, Barnsley, Derby and Leicester have since they suffered relegation from the Premiership.

But, as if they have got a death wish for their clubs, chairmen have continued to ignore the perils and the latest figures show that spending on players' wages actually rose by a hefty 28 per cent last year.

Managers can be expected to want the best players and players have every right to get as much money as they can.

The chairmen's job is to say no if their clubs cannot afford it. The problem is they buckle because, basically, they are fans in suits who want to see those new players in their teams as much as any fan...whether the club can afford it or not.

The result is a Bradford, Derby, York, etc, situation and recriminations all round.

At Maine Road, David Bernstein's chairmanship ended because he was too cautious. Kevin Keegan has already spent £50 million in 18 months and wants to spend more and Bernstein wanted to hold fire on spending more money City don't even have yet.

Sheffield United manager Neil Warnock is renowned for achieving success on a shoestring and he summed up what is wrong with club finances this week when he said: "I think Premiership clubs must like throwing their money away."

He could have been referring to Bob Murray at Sunderland, who gave Peter Reid £10 million to spend on two players and then sacked him a month later.

Or to Leeds who wildly overspent their way to a net debt of £78 million and then had to sell to survive with chairman Peter Ridsdale admitting they were just chasing a dream all along. Well, that's all right then.

The call has gone out for players to have it written into their contracts that their wages will fall accordingly if their club is relegated.

No player would go for that and it would take a brave chairman to insist on it. But maybe those clubs who have suffered financial crises after relegation from the Premiership - Swindon, Barnsley, Bradford, Derby, Leicester, Palace and Watford - now wish their chairman had been brave instead of lavish at the time.