THERE were those who shook their heads sadly 30 years ago next month when Brian Clough made Trevor Francis British football’s first £1m signing.

The fact Nottingham Forest were prepared to pay such a sum of money during the 1978-9 Winter of Discont-ent was simply shocking to those who knew the real value of the notes and coins in their pockets. Back then, the average annual wage for English workers was around £11,500 mark, and the average house price double that.

Fast-forward three decades and the annual wage figure has increased threefold and the average house price has rocketed to around £170,000. Sadly such inflationary figures are not so common when it comes to football transfer fees.

No one bats an eyelid when a player is sold for £1m these days. Southampton paid more than that for a teenager nobody had really heard of last summer (Morgan Schneiderlin).

But eyebrows were certainly raised this week when the owners of Manchester City FC reportedly slapped in a £100m bid for Brazilian superstar Kaka.

If reports are to be believed, the man who took over City last summer – the cash-rich Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, based in Abu Dhabi – is prepared to bankroll Kaka’s arrival to such an extent he would pay him £500,000 per week.

Yes, that’s £500,000. Half a million quid. Per week. Madness. Total and utter madness.

And people wonder why fans up and down the country are seemingly falling out of love with what Pele, the world’s greatest ever footballer, famously coined ‘the beautiful game’? There’s nothing beautiful about the sums of money mentioned in City’s supposed bid for Kaka. It’s obscene.

Thousands of football fans could spend their entire working lives earning less in those four decades than Kaka could earn in a month with a club who haven’t looked like winning a major trophy for years.

And there’s a sick sense of timing, as thousands of jobs are being lost seemingly on a daily basis. But Middle East-based sheikhs aren’t worried about the English credit crunch. All they want is to sign up the world’s top players and make Manchester City the greatest club in Europe – a tough ask when they’re not even the greatest club in Manchester.

Such obscene sums of money must stick in the throat for all football fans, whoever you support. Where is the glory in following a club with that sort of spending power?

Where will it end? Will all the top English clubs one day be owned by these mega-billionaries? Will only the super, super-rich one day be trying to outbid each other to bring world stars to these shores? One of the best comments I have read about the Manchester City owner came from a City fan shortly after the sheikh had taken over. I’m paraphrasing, but it said something like City could win umpteen pieces of silverware by spending hundreds of millions on international stars, but none of them would ever give him the joy that watching City win the FA Youth Cup with several local lads in their side did last season. All true football fans know where that man is coming from. I’m hardly an old-timer – 39 if you must know – but I don’t mind saying this: money has ruined the game I fell in love with as a kid.

The true essence of the sport continues to be found the lower down the English leagues you go, but at the top level it’s turned sour.

Football wasn’t all great back in the 70s and 80s, but there was more of a level playing field. The likes of Luton, Coventry, Wimbledon and Oxford Utd won major trophies at Wembley. Those days are gone.

If Kaka does move to City, when he puts pen to paper in Manchester we’ll hear a distant noise all the way down here in Hampshire.

It will be the soul of English football turning in its grave.