Emmet Malone looks at the battle even the biggest clubs face to cut their cloth to fit their measure as television revenue falls dramatically "The news that Manchester City have funded their summer spending spree by borrowing against the extra ticket revenue they expect to take in at theirnew home suggests that not everybody is willing to forsake the excess of recent years."

If ever we needed confirmation that times have changed in football, it came this week when Chelsea's outspoken chairman, Ken Bates, celebrated in a newspaper column the fact that Premiership managers are finally having to live within the means of their clubs.

For most of the 1990s, Chelsea managed, by way of their youth development scheme, to redistribute youngsters from London as effectively as any organisation had done since the Blitz. Year after year, teenage players would complete their apprenticeship at Stamford Bridge only to be told that they weren't good enough.

Thereafter, the ones capable of picking themselves up again would leave to pursue their careers at clubs that couldn't afford to import a lorry load of big names every summer.

So when even Bates is suggesting "home-grown talent" is the way forward, it doesn't take a genius to work out the extent of the financial difficulties being experienced within English football during the build-up to this new league season.

In fact, the game has been hit hard across Europe, with clubs in Spain and Italy affected as badly as their English counterparts, some much worse so. A little more than a year ago Fiorentina, with a string of international stars on their books, had finished ninth in the Serie A table, and thanks to their Italian Cup success qualified for the UEFA Cup. Now the club is gone.

Now they are bankrupt and have been replaced by a new entity, Fiorentina 1926, which will play in Serie C2, a regional division roughly on a par with the Conference in England. Of their famous players, only Italian international Angelo Di Livio, at 36, has indicated he will stay on. He does so, he says, in the hope of repaying some of the warmth shown to him by the people of Florence.

As it happens, he may have struggled to find alternative employment. Europe is overrun with out-of-work footballers, with even established stars like Stefan Effenberg, Taribo West and Hakan Sukur still talking this week to some rather lowly, would-be employers. Indeed, only last night Effenberg was reported to have signed a one-year deal with German, um, powerhouse Vfl Wolsburg.

Effenberg, whose disparaging comments about the unemployed earlier in the year ensured his predicament was the source of widespread glee, looked more unemployable than most. Austria Vienna had expressed an interest, but the deal fell through as he continued to demand huge wages.

Meanwhile, most Bundesliga clubs are on the brink of collapse since the demise of the Kirsch media group and the television deal the company had with the league. And even the big Turkish sides, traditionally willing to splash out on the occasional big foreign name, were forced to think twice after talking to a player who had been on some £8 million a year at Bayern Munich but didn't realise that times have changed.

Back in England, players like Alpay at Aston Villa, Lee Bowyer at Leeds and Chelsea's Eidur Gudjohnsen have been among those to have had a taste of just how dramatically things have altered within the Premiership. With only a year to run on their television deals, and revenue expected to drop dramatically next time around, due in part to the failure of pay per view and the lack of interest this time around of companies with an exposure to the depressed telecommunications sector, clubs have finally started to take the issue of spiralling player wages seriously.

The three quickly came to see how the mood had changed after overplaying their hands during the summer. The Turkish international had his demand for a 50 per cent pay increase leaked to the media by a club that made clear it would rather let him go than agree to his terms. The English midfielder saw his move to Anfield collapse after the talks on personal terms reached a stalemate. And the agent for the Icelandic striker was forced into a quiet climbdown after publicly warning the London club that they would have to consider other offers if a new contract and hefty rise wasn't forthcoming, only to discover that Sunderland were the only other club willing to provide some competition.

Transfer funds have also been thin on the ground. A minority of Premiership clubs, most notably Leeds, who spent only £2.75 million of the almost £30 million received for Rio Ferdinand, have actually profited from their dealings in the marketplace this summer, while, last year's top three aside, only a handful - Newcastle, Middlesbrough and Manchester City - have spent significantly.

Manchester United's expenditure on Ferdinand looks extravagant in a market where so many clubs have been desperate to cut their wage bills, but they are at least fairly sure of what they are getting for their money. Having been stung in the days when multi-million pound fees were regularly paid for players who had not even been seen in the flesh, the market for foreign imports has weakened considerably at the expensive end now that money is more scarce.

Continental clubs desperate to sell have instead been sending players over on approval, and a growing number on show in the English top flight this year will simply be on loan.

Of course, these changes will not have much effect on the pecking order within the league, and it is difficult to see anything more dramatic than a reshuffle among Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United at the top of the table come the end of the season.

But whoever triumphs will be of no more than academic interest to the majority of clubs both inside and outside the Premiership for whom the target will be nothing more than survival.

The lower divisions, particularly the First Division which was set to get most of the money, have been devastated by the collapse of ITV Digital, and for clubs up and down Britain the next few months will be a desperate struggle.

The news this week, though, that Manchester City have funded their summer spending spree by borrowing against the extra ticket revenue they expect to take in at their new home over the next 20 years suggests that not everybody is willing to forsake the excess of recent years.

Most, though, have begun to read the writing on the wall, and for those youngsters that have so far survived the cull, at least, that might represent a silver lining to the dark clouds that hang over the game.