FORMER captain Jeff Kenna has voiced his fears about Blues’ future and painted a bleak picture of what failure to make a quick return to the Premier League would mean.

Worryingly for the club’s supporters, the ex-Republic of Ireland international, who was at St Andrew’s from 2002-04 and was part of the side who won promotion to the top flight in his first season, likened the worst case scenario to what happened to Leeds around the same time.

Mere mention of the Elland Road outfit has come to be used as a short-hand for severe financial troubles off the pitch, relegation-tinged agonies on it and a fate few would wish for any football club, as Leeds plummeted from the semi-finals of the Champions League to the darkness of League One.

Which is why Kenna expressed his sympathy with his former team and also outlined the need for promotion back to the television-revenue rich top-tier before the cost of last term’s demotion becomes too great.

“When you live local and you have played for the club it’s a sad state to be in,” Kenna lamented.

“If they don’t bounce straight back up you look at what happened to Leeds and you can see that happening.

“And it will be a long and difficult process to get back up to where they were if that were to happen.

“Are these parachute payments their window of opportunity? Without a doubt. You look at players’ wages, I don’t know if that will get near players’ wages.

“They have obviously got players there who will be on decent contracts.”

Blues have been, and remain, in the process of reducing that number. Seventeen players were released at the season’s end, including big earners Kevin Phillips, Lee Bowyer and loanees Obafemi Martins and Aleksandr Hleb.