If you open a paper these days,  the chances are that you'll be reading some scaremonger's take on the current financial dark cloud hanging overhead just waiting to rain down doom and gloom all over us.

It's the combination of one person's fiction and another person's creative imagination designed to paint an overcast picture of life as we know it and what we can expect from the future. The trouble is, we never know whether or not we should absorb this information as fact or read more into it to find an ulterior motive.

So is this current credit crunch starting to filter down to football?

Now I'm not stating that clubs will have to start using low-energy light bulbs on the floodlights to save on the electricity bills and that ticket and pie prices will have to go up 70 percent. It's just one or two observations as a Spurs fan and a football fan in general that have got me wondering.

For example, compared to recent years, the transfer market has been a fair bit quieter than usual, especially when you consider that we have just come off the back of a major international tournament. Usually clubs line up to take a risk on players who have had one or two good games in the championships, such as Milan Baros from previous tournaments and Andrei Arshavin this time around.

You can also take into consideration the fact that the usual suspects are not throwing money around left, right and centre in the way we've come to expect. The likes of Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool, to name a few, seem to be a little more prudent with their finances at present.

Now you could argue that whilst Chelsea have not spent their usual £150million, do they need to? Is it a case of a super-wealthy club tightening its belt of just the fact they have the squad and infrastructure in place not to have to buy players at present?

The same could be asked about Manchester United. A squad who are about to defend their mantle as Premiership and Champions League winners probably don't need a great deal of strengthening; even so they always tend to make one massive signing. This year the target appears to be Dimitar Berbatov, if you believe the media; however, they are looking to pay substantially less than they were apparently prepared to offer last year.

But it's Arsenal, Liverpool and now Spurs that have got me thinking.

We'll start with Arsenal, a team that, to be fair, proved many critics wrong with a very good season despite losing their talisman Thierry Henry. We all know that Arsene Wenger is a very shrewd manager and doesn't often get involved in big-money auctions for big-name players. His strengths lie in finding the rough diamonds and turning them into gems. That's not to say he doesn't wade in with some hefty cash transfers now and then, but it does seem apparent that his dealings at present seem to involve players leaving the Emirates. Which can only lead me to assume that the new stadium is something of a financial burden, hence the vulture circling Emmanuel Adebayor.

Then you have Liverpool, a club generally used to spending big to feed the ambition of their fans, who crave a return to the club's glorious past. Let's be honest, though, since the announcement of the new stadium, the purse strings seem to have been tightened, with Rafa Benitez saying he'd like David Villa but he is too expensive, and apparently humming and ha-ing about whether or not to buy Robbie Keane or Gareth Barry, when we'd be more accustomed to see them buying all three without battering an eyelid.

Which brings me on to Spurs, the league's perennial under-achievers. In recent seasons the White Hart Lane club have spent money for fun to try to bridge the gap between them and the Big Four, and it looked like they were going down the same route this year with the signings of Luka Modric, Giovani Dos Santos and Huerelho Gomes.

However, in recent weeks much has been made about the White Hart Lane exodus, with Teemu Tainio, Younes Kaboul, Pascal Chimbonda and Steed Malbranque looking to test the waters up north. Then there's Paul Robinson leaving for Blackburn together with Keane and Berbatov looking to head through the Lane's exit for Liverpool and Manchester United respectively.

Now I know that these deals have not all been done, but let's assume the worst and they all go - then Spurs will look to receive an absolute fortune. Now I'm aware clubs need to balance the books, but this exodus would make the balancing incredibly one-sided. Many suggest that the incoming funds would be given straight to Juande Ramos to purchase re-enforcements which is the likely outcome, but for all the hundreds of targets the media seem to claim Spurs have, they don't appear to be close to signing any of them any time soon, baulking at some of the over-inflated price tags.

Now the obvious voice of reason will say, 'well you're not going to spend money on replacing them if they haven't gone yet, and you can't spend the money until you have it'. But I wonder whether, seeing how the finances at Arsenal and Liverpool have been stretched by the outlay of a new stadium, chairman Daniel Levy has decided that we should put this potential incoming bounty towards our own stadium ambitions.

Let's face it, without Champions League football, our income is limited compared to those above us and if they appear to have financial constrictions, that's maybe a bridge Levy does not want to take with Spurs. This being said, could he be looking at this current chance to make money as a chance to finance a massive rebuilding project while asking the fans for some patience and to accept another few years floating around sixth place whilst he builds the stadium we deserve without getting us into too much debt? This would allow us to remain competitive in the transfer market when the project is complete and make an all-out assault on breaking the monopoly of the top four. How would you feel if he did? After all, it's for the best long-term.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it and am reverting into a doom-and-gloom merchant myself, maybe the players will go and suitable re-enforcements will be purchased and I'm just being impatient. Levy definitely has our best interests at heart; it'll just be interesting to see which path he chooses to take.