Leeds Utd - 0 Manchester Utd - 1  In the case of Leeds United there is no silver lining accompanying the cloud. As if being bankrupt of scoring ideas was not harrowing enough, further trauma lies in wait judging by the news seeping out of Elland Road that they are about to announce the worst financial results in Premiership history.

By the week of Hallowe'en, when Prof John McKenzie releases the figures, Leeds's debts might be up from £79 million and close to £100 million.

The full details of their impoverished state will not be known until a statement is released to the stock exchange next week but the horrors to come were confirmed at boardroom level on Saturday and McKenzie's reaction told its own story.

The chairman made a great play of pointing out he had been in office for only three months of the last financial year, so indicating the blame lay with his predecessor Peter Ridsdale.

The results "will not show a dramatic turnaround," said McKenzie, adding that "you don't turn around a tanker in two minutes". A nice theory, except that Leeds, both on and off the field, are more like a leaky dinghy right now, and there might not be enough lifejackets to go around.

They did not, in mitigation, resemble a bottom-three side on the pitch, but there was such an imbalance of talent between them and Manchester United it cannot be discounted that they will finish the season with their toes tagged for the relegation morgue.

And then what? McKenzie, for one, has already contemplated the worst-case scenario, one that combines demotion to the first division, the likelihood of then going into administration and, under the Football League's new rules, the possible 10-point deduction that might follow.

"It would be very difficult to survive," he admitted. "There would have to be savage cuts and big changes, even what you charge the fans for seats. It would be a sad day for Leeds. But every time a goal goes in against us you fear about the direction we're going."

It says much that David Batty was by far their most effective player yet belonged to a midfield quartet that was so overwhelmed that Peter Reid asked his striker Alan Smith to drop back to man-mark Roy Keane. Defying his creaking limbs, Keane had begun the match by nutmegging Mark Viduka and, together with Paul Scholes, was the catalyst for a controlled victory, albeit one that took longer than anticipated to eke out.

For Peter Reid, one-nil was no disgrace. But it probably should have been worse and doubtless would have been if Scholes's late shot had not come back off the crossbar, if Salomon Olembe had not cleared Ruud van Nistelrooy's shot off the goalline or, in the first half, if Graham Poll had not been so suspicious of Cristiano Ronaldo's motives for his two penalty appeals.

Poll, it must be noted, was excellent, although Ronaldo could argue there was definitely a brush from Gary Kelly on both occasions. But Ronaldo is suffering the consequences of his own actions - even Keane admonished his team-mate for one exaggerated fall.

Keane then headed in the solitary goal. He probably cut the half-time oranges, too. In fact he was so instrumental in everything it would have been no surprise to see him driving the team coach across the Pennines.