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One leading football director told me, "All right the credit crunch means some people have a lot less money but in the end football will attract money and I still expect four more clubs to be foreign-owned. And remember the League is now looking to its next television deal and already there is talk that next time round may be interested, pushing the price up even further."

This man has been very involved in the game for many years, made money from it and is not a novice like Mike Ashley, so it not easy to rubbish his views.

Yet to pretend that football can just ignore the crash is plainly wrong.

It is obvious that the impact of the Lehman collapse means that the high-roller spending that has brought what Roy Keane called the prawn sandwich brigade to the game, the ones who fuelled sale of corporate boxes and used football as entertainment, will suffer.

And that has an impact on clubs which are planning to build new stadiums and hoping to finance them by selling high-priced corporate boxes as Wembley and Arsenal did.

Clubs that might be sold must also now be distinguished between those that come with a stadium baggage and those that do not.

Both Liverpool and Everton come into that category.

Any Everton buyer will need to be sure Kirkby will work.

It was the desire to match Manchester United, and its stadium expansion begun under Martin Edwards, that prompted David Moores to look for a buyer for Liverpool and eventually end up with one that may lead nowhere.

Contrast that with Arsenal's financing of the Emirates stadium.

It was a complicated deal which made Arsenal, as their chairman Peter Hill-Wood said, a property company. But central to the deal was that most of the money was borrowed - some £260m - with the club made to find the remaining £140m.

Any new Liverpool owner will find it impossible to strike such a bargain, even Arsenal would admit they could now not do such a deal with the banks and any Arsenal-style deal is also beyond Tottenham.

Although Tottenham deny they are for sale, their stadium problem in some ways is worse then their problems on the pitch and should the buyers sniffing round make an offer they will be very mindful of how they can finance a revamped or new White Hart Lane.

Tottenham have the added headache that the 2012 Olympics mean that the money necessary to make the journey to Seven Sisters Road less of the hell it is now may no longer be available.

The lack of stadium baggage puts Newcastle and Manchester City in a different league.

City was given its stadium on very generous terms of rent and so is in a good position.

The previous owners of Newcastle had plans for expansion but St James' Park is a perfectly good stadium and this combined with the club's great support should make it an attractive purchase for any buyer.

However now the foreign owners who have looked at it know they can no longer borrow to buy.

Some are also very worried by the never-never land of football transfers.

This can mean that a club takes years to pay for a player transfer particularly when the deal is with a foreign club. Indeed it can get to the stage that the buying club is still paying after the player has left.

And while there is little good to say about the way in which Ashley managed Newcastle, these potential buyers have also realised that while there may be money in football an owner only makes money when he sells, and that road is paved with anguish and requires owners who have skins thick enough to take abuse from frustrated fans.

will walk away from Man City with a near £50m profit. The headline figure for the Abu Dhabi deal is likely to be around £200m but much of this is providing for loans. They key figure is £21m - that is what Shinawatra paid for the equity of City. He will get some £71m for it.

In the past such figures have attracted foreign buyers.

For some months now there has been much talk of rich Indians buying a Premier League club.

Recently this has featured the rich Indian businessman . His feud with brother is well-documented. Mukesh has an cricket franchise so what better for brother Anil than to go for an EPL club to trump his brother? In reality this seems unlikely.

The financial crash combined with the football madness revealed by Mike Ashley's stewardship, or lack of it, appears to have changed attitudes.

Before the collapse Ashley's handling of Newcastle could be treated as one of the quirks of the game. Now, in a much more sombre financial market, it is evidence of the lunacy of football finance. Anil Ambani is certainly backing away from any such idea.

And there are many other rich men like him having second thoughts about entering this mad world.