SIXTH place in the top flight - their highest placing for donkey's years - and qualification for the UEFA Cup, Bolton Wanderers are surely inhabiting dreamland.

But wait a mo'. Just listen to chairman Phil Gartside. After admittedly extolling the virtues of Bolton's 'unbelievable' term, his joy was tempered by a cautionary codicil: "We mustn't get carried away talking about a UEFA Cup campaign. We've got to stay in the Premier League. That's what next season is all about."

On the brink of history, on the verge of a new frontier, yet Bolton, whom many would consider an established Premiership club, are more concerned with grinding out those 40 points that will at least stave off the threat of relegation from the Premiership's nirvana next term. It demonstrates just how staying put in upper class is the 'be all and end all' for the majority of clubs comprising the Premiership.

Hence the heart-ache and anguish on Richter-type scales for demoted trio Crystal Palace, Norwich City and Southampton compared to the sheer detonation of exultation in the Midlands as West Brom confounded critics and statistics to hold on to that cherished 17th position.

Hence too, the imminent hand-wringing for the three clubs out of Preston, Derby, Ipswich and West Ham, who, over the next fortnight, will fail to negotiate the last hurdle represented by the Championship play-offs.

In sheer contrast, for the club that squeezes out of that quaking quartet to gate-crash the elite, delight will be unconfined.

What an indictment about the state of the people's game. Apart from the handful of clubs who can genuinely contest the championship - a number now realistically dwindled like a tautened noose to the three of Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester United - several are locked in the squabble for UEFA Cup crumbs.

But for the rest, and that's close on half the top 20, ambition now revolves grasping the coat-tails of the boom-boom bandwagon and hanging on for dear life as it rattles along a road ridged around a ravine. Little wonder only masochists and manicurists will benefit.

Cash incentives are so loaded in favour of the richest clubs that the roller-coaster ride increases in grave danger each season. The juiced-up juggernaut is fuelled by lucre, which is what made Manchester United so attractive to a corporate tycoon like American Malcolm Glazer. One only has to think of the example of Dr Faustus. Sell your soul and inevitably the Devil comes a-calling.

The danger for the game is that it will spin ever more wildly out of control if the Premiership powers gain even more control as they are presently demanding.

In a report that for audacity borders on the incredible, the Premiership damned the FA for the ills that are now besetting the game. But all those problems can be directly attributed to the Premiership's self-serving breakaway from the Football League and its subsequent selfish hi-jacking of all gate receipts for home matches and creaming off the majority of cash from television sponsorship deals.

Now they reportedly want more control over Team England - no coincidence when that particular 'brand' is proving itself to be increasingly profitable.

Remember the scene in the 1980s remake of the film Scarface in which Al Pacino buries his head in a billowing pillow of cocaine. That's the Premiership for you - excess all areas.

What the FA have been most guilty of this past decade is a craven lack of leadership. It's time for them to stand up to the grabbers and graspers. It may seem unlikely, but why not call the major players' bluff should they threaten something like a European League?

The appetite for greater integritywill not disappear, it will more likely flourish. Who knows, we may again enjoy a premier division where honours are the expectation of the majority and not the favoured few.

Updated: 09:11 Tuesday, May 17, 2005