The more things change, the more they stay the same

To keep my mind occupied as we wait with bated breath for the fixtures to come out (come on, it can't be just me who wants to know when to book that romatic weekend in, er, Gateshead) I've been reading a very good book.

Published by When Saturday Comes, it is entitled Power, Corruption, and Pies vol. 2 (it is, as you've probably guessed, a follow up to Power Corruption and Pies vol. 1), and contains a collection of the best articles published in WSC between 1997 - 2007.

As befits a publication from Britain's most consistently interesting football magazine, there are some extremely excellent pieces. One which caught my eye was an interview with Claude Le Roy undertaken during the 1998 world cup, in which our erstwhile manager and then custodian of the Cameroon national team says football offers "une jouissance permanente" - a permanent orgasm. One suspects he may have revised this view after coaching the likes of Ashley Nicholls and Danny Webb, because if not I feel very sorry for Mrs Le Roy.

Another which struck a chord is entitled Crossing the Vauxhall Bridge, and concerns overspending chairman in the (then) Vauxhall Conference. What hit me most was how little has changed in the 11 years since Simon Bell wrote the article in November 1997. Consider the following quotes:

"One of the most irritating things about the Vauxhall Conference wants to be - really wants to be - the Football League. It's bit embarrassing."

"The result is a league in limbo, a small pool containing a few potentially league-sized fish and a rather larger shoal of tiddlers living beyond their means in the fond belief that they will one day grow legs and scramble out of the swamp - and to hell with the cost."

"Division Five', wherein 22 thrusting and ambitious clubs would joust for the right to play Hartlepool has never quite become a reality."

Sound familiar? If you changed a few of the names the article could still apply today. For Colne Dynamos and Sittingbourne then, substitute Farsley Celtic, Salisbury, or any of the other teams currently on the financial precipice.

It's depressing on two levels really. One, because chairman are still stupid enough to bankroll these nothing clubs in the vain hope of achieving some modicum of success. And two, because despite their claims to the contrary, the Conference management continue to do nothing of consequence about it. Instead they prefer to fiddle at the edges, everytime promising a tough regime but allowing teams like Weymouth overpsend again and again and again.

So despite these boasts of Setanta-enforced austerity from all and sundry, what's the betting that by January they'll be more than one chairman overstretching themselves to try and push their club into the promised land? Who knows, our own Chairman George might be one of them.