HISTORIANS OF a satirical bent may one day recall that it all began to go wrong for Leeds United when they were pitched out of the European Cup, many moons ago, by a team called Rangers.

A player named Cantona then left the English club for a side who, in those days, Leeds fans were pleased to deem ancestral rivals. So where are Manchester United now, and where are the old enemies? A better question, if ungrammatical, is due to be answered by 5pm tomorrow: are Leeds? On the block, up for sale, will they survive at all?

These days, the mud-flecked institution that made the names of Don Revie, Billy Bremner and Jack Charlton is less a football club than a parable. If Bogstandard College ever runs a course entitled Everything A Director Must Never Do, Leeds should count as lesson one, exhibit A.

I should point out that Leeds' widely-esteemed former chairman Ken Bates is, obviously, a wise businessman with a deep sense of community who put the club into administration and took a points penalty - sportingly - so that creditors, ex-players, the ambulance folk and other civilians might be offered 8p in the pound. Mr Bates didn't get where he is today And so forth.

It remains a little surprising, though, that a man of such experience should underestimate Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs so completely. Call me a poor freelance writer who has only sat through a couple of hilarious interviews with Mr Tax, but I suspect that when he wants a £7.7 million pound of flesh it's best not to play games.

Leeds used to play football. It was never the pretty version, but it never lacked for application. I saw Hibs take them on, famously, at Easter Road a very long time ago and learned that this game we fuss over is truly a contact sport. That night, it counted as a blood sport.

Leeds were horrible, but fascinating. Such was their tradition. The "will to win" approached fascism and it involved methods that, these days, would see games abandoned. According to rumour, they had an entire coaching badge named secretly in their honour: How to Hurt People, the Leeds Way.

They were grisly, but strangely admirable. Bremner personified most of it. For the fans with typewriters he was merely "fiery". If your side was up against him three words waited to be permed: b*stard, dirty, little. Yet if you were non-aligned he, and Leeds, possessed a certain sort of grubby insouciance. Sometimes those white shirts seemed like a deliberate joke.

Yet this was once, in all its cynicism, English football, the real thing. If you were lucky, only your legs (ask your dad) got bitten. And on a dull Monday afternoon in the 21st century it could all be over.

You can measure the extent of the decline and fall of Leeds simply by recalling that the club inaugurated the Premiership as England's champions. The Manchester lot had won nothing, to speak of, in a quarter of a century. In 1992, Howard Wilkinson (yes, really) got Leeds a league title. David Batty (yes, really) was the hero of Elland Road. And in Cantona sophistication and brutality were somehow combined.

This morning, £35m is owed. Buyers are queuing up, as ever, but administrators KPMG cannot say whether the Football League will countenance the continuing participation of Leeds United when the season begins. If you are of a certain age, even that sentence sounds absurd. But the story it tells us about football, as an industry, is beyond predictable. It is as tiresome, almost, as Mr Bates.

The child's version says that Leeds should blame David O'Leary for spending money that the club did not, in fact, possess. That version is true, up to a point. As recently as 2001 there was a fourth-place Premiership finish and a thrilling run to a Champions League semi-final to show for all the accumulating debt. But there was also £18m to be found, while the directors flew first-class on any whim, for Rio Ferdinand, and an issue to be addressed.

Can a football club, any football club, live on the assumption, as a matter of accounting practice, of European tournament money? There are perhaps a dozen outfits across Europe capable of defining themselves in terms of that risk. Chelsea, Bayern, Barca, Milan, Manchester United: we can all do the list. With all due respect, Leeds were never natural to that world. They persuaded themselves, nevertheless, that the entrance fee was less a choice than an obligation.

O'Leary and the deeply admirable chairman Peter Ridsdale, a man fond of expensive executive goldfish - such things exist, apparently - tried to buy the dream. It says that you become a rich, trans-continental sporting franchise when you act like one. It says, in effect, that you must risk everything on a turn of the cards.

Obviously, if you then happen to wind up fifth in "the best league in the world", as Leeds did in 2002, the ba', fiscally-speaking, is burst. Just like that. I'm not strong on sums, but I suspect that much of the club's indebtedness could be explained by the difference between vast sums paid for players and sums gained, when the fire sale began, for those same talents.

If Leeds got a good offer for the Billy Bremner statue tomorrow they would probably take it. That's a shame. Worse, though, is the sight of all those other aspirant outfits who have learned none of these lessons and who are already blowing their unearned TV money on minor playing talents, or taking Champions League income for granted.

Celtic and their £10m European profit come to mind, for some reason. Parkhead is run according to sound business principles, as they never tire of telling us.

At the back of my mind, nevertheless, there lurks the moral to our tale. Nothing complicated. If it can happen to Leeds, it can happen to anyone. And it will.