A HUGE DEBT INCURRED by the incompetence of a previous regime and inherited by successors hamstrung by the burden of financial constraint and unrealistic expectation? A familiar tale in the modern game, an allegorical one that goes unheeded at a club’s peril these days.

While Leeds United once had Peter Ridsdale running up an overdraft that equated to the annual GDP in some banana republics, Coventry City were lurching from one economic disaster to another with a fiscal curiosity named Bryan Richardson as chairman.

Having stared at the abyss, the West Yorkshire club appear to be back on an even keel. For Coventry, deprived of a seventh successive home league victory in the closing minutes but nonetheless rejuvenated since December, the feeling is one of that popular optimism espoused by Del Boy Trotter: this time next year, Rodders, we’ll be millionaires.

“We have had many, many managers in the last few seasons (in fact, there have been ten different faces at the helm in five years) and that can’t be good,” Micky Adams, the incumbent, said. “The debts have not gone away but at least people are talking about the football now.”

Under pressure earlier in the season with a team scarcely befitting the new Ricoh Arena, Adams gradually has blended a team who are likely to finish just outside the play-offs, but with cause for further progress next season.

His team’s pivot will be Gary McSheffrey, the local lad who was reared in the shadows of Highfield Road. Despite the trauma of that 1960s carbuncle hovering daily over his formative years, McSheffrey has matured into a talent and has inspired Steve Staunton, the Ireland coach, to scrutinise that childhood more closely with a view to unearthing an Irish descendant.

McSheffrey’s 26th-minute opener, his 50th goal for the club, hinted at his ability, while an enticing run and shot wide confirmed his status as the game’s outstanding player.

David Healy’s 88th-minute penalty, awarded after a careless handball by Andrew Whing, secured a draw for Leeds, for whom victory over Crystal Palace at Elland Road tomorrow night could take them to within one point of Sheffield United and an automatic promotion place.

Kevin Blackwell, the Leeds manager, believes that the club are 12 months ahead of schedule in regaining their Premiership status and a premature promotion would cost them £16 million in payments to bond-holders. A mere drop in the ocean to Ridsdale and Richardson. Where are they now?