WITHOUT wishing to be alarmist, a 5-0 thrashing at Chelsea in the week when his old mate Peter Reid was sacked by Leeds must serve as a dual warning for Sir Bobby Robson.

Although they have not been so ludicrously profligate as the Yorkshire club, Newcastle's current situation mirrors the dilemma which precipitated Leeds' demise two-and-a-half years ago. After losing to Valencia in the Champions League semi-finals, they failed to qualify for the following season by finishing fourth in the Premiership.

As their wage structure was dependent on the millions generated by Champions League involvement it wouldn't have taken a genius to foresee problems. But after the mismanagement of the subsequent two years, nor did it require a powerful crystal ball at the start of this season to predict that Reid wouldn't last until Christmas and the team would be relegated. Reid's appointment beggared belief, especially on a year's contract worth £850,000. In little over a year a club with £78m of debt has saddled itself with paying over £6m in compensation to three managers. David O'Leary is receiving £3.7m and Terry Venables £2m.

This is the economics of the madhouse, and just when there was some sign of a return to sanity in the English game as a whole along came Roman Abramovich and poured an amount of money into Chelsea which could have been used to build two hospitals.

As last Saturday's result proved, Chelsea's outrageous fortune has made it all the harder for Newcastle to get back into the Champions League. So they will have to watch the purse-strings, although not quite so much as Leeds, whose only option now is to appoint a manager with something to prove, like Neil Warnock. Either that or stick with Eddie Gray, whose love of the club outweighs his greed.

IT WAS a little worrying to read in Matt Dawson's national newspaper column that he had never felt so tired at half-time as in England's game against Wales. He also noted that Jonny Wilkinson looked exhausted.

Sir Ranulph Fiennes runs seven marathons in a week little over a month after having a heart attack, yet England's highly-trained half backs are knackered at half-time in a World Cup quarter-final.

So thorough has been their preparation, it looks ominously as if England are over-trained and over-coached. Obsessed with practising his kicking, Wilkinson is putting so much pressure on himself that he is sick before matches. He began the World Cup as everyone's choice at fly half in a World XV, but goes into this weekend's semi-finals ranked third behind France's new sensation Frederic Michalak and the All Blacks' Carlos Spencer.

While these two bring flair, pace and imagination to the game, England's play has the laboured look of something which is meticulously pre-programmed and rehearsed to the point where they can no longer do anything off the cuff.

If France continue to play as they did in the first half against Ireland they will be unstoppable. But they are notoriously inconsistent, and I live in hope that England have planned everything so perfectly that they are building to a peak over the next two games.

IF Sir Ranulph Fiennes can run seven marathons in a week, why can't National Hunt racehorses run more than four times a season?

There will probably be an outcry from the animal cruelty brigade, but unless horses are sent out to tackle the hurdles and fences more often it seems NH racing could be doomed, and all the punters will have to sustain them in winter is the all-weather stuff. Last Saturday only five of the 21 jump races had enough runners for each-way betting, probably knocking 20 per cent off the day's anticipated betting turnover of £40m. Coming on top of the unwelcome inquiry by the Office of Fair Trading, and the loss of sponsorships such as Martell's backing of the Grand National meeting, small fields are contributing to a crisis.

A blueprint was published this week offering solutions and top of the list is the need to provide decent going to encourage more runners. It also suggests the best races should be run on Saturdays on the best tracks, rather than on a Tuesday at Exeter.

Unless action is taken, it seems, the future for courses like Sedgefield is very bleak indeed.

PAT Eddery's distinguished 37-year career hasn't quite finished as he competes in an international jockeys' event in Mauritius next month. But there was a bizarre end to his career in Britain at Doncaster on Saturday when the stewards ticked him off for excessive use of the whip and warned him as to his future conduct!