Leeds United, in the last few years have been used as a warning, a lesson of what can happen if a football club allows its finances to spiral out of control. Every time those boys in white have stepped onto the field of play, TV pundits, Radio commentators, journalists, the lot, have never failed to remind us of our fall from grace.

We were meant to be a lesson to clubs in the future of what not to do. Yet we are now seeing other clubs falling into administration, especially Portsmouth who despite making millions of profit by selling players are in financial turmoil. Now the press are saying that they need to be an example of what not to do. 

I am sure that our demise was a blessing in disguise, coming at a time that allowed us to recover slowly. The arrival of Ken Bates steadying the ship and rebuilding the club from the bottom up has given us the foundations to rise again and in a few years compete at the top. There will be other clubs falling into disrepair in the next couple of years while we are now an example of a club that is self sustaining, not relying on outside investment and ultimately a profit making business.

Every football club in England is precious, we should not wish upon them administration. The whole structure of the football league is based upon its history and rivalries. Smaller clubs such as Southend are important in the future in terms of allowing young players opportunities or as a shop window for higher placed teams.

I'm not sure that docking points is the answer in the long term, the whole football league needs to look at the way it sustains itself rather than punishing single clubs. The rules in place have allowed teams to exploit spending structures and these rules need to be changed to secure the future of clubs.

Leeds are a lesson that hasn't been learned.

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Seven years ago a book called Broken Dreams by Tom Bower was published delivering a scathing assessment of the modern game, the vanity, greed, financial mismanagement, clueless authorities and loss of touch with the grassroots. That same year Leeds were at the start of their demise, the crown jewels had been sold off, the managers and chairmans offices had been fitted with revolving doors and Premiership football had only just been secured after a late (some might say offside) goal from Mark Viduka at Highbury. Our fall from grace lead to the term ‘Doing a Leeds United’ which is according to Wikipedia is ‘A phrase synonymous with the potential dire consequences for domestic clubs of financial mismanagement’. Seven years on and no one seems to have learned from either, be it the clubs who get themselves into these situations or the footballing authorities who appear both powerless and clueless to do anything about it.

While it was business as usual on Tuesday night with Carlisle fans bouncing up and down chanting ‘We all hate Leeds scum’ something quite odd has been happening over the last few weeks. In recent times the FA Cup 2nd and 3rd rounds have been the time for everyone to support whichever team we are playing against and revel in our failure, take Histon for example. Even in the second round of this year competition everyone seemed to be a Kettering fan, tuning into ITV on a weekend just to watch us loose and our demise continue.

But something changed with our 3rd round victory over manchester united, it was hard to pick up a paper the next day without reading something complimentary about Leeds United, even the Mirror was vaguely nice about us. Football commentators and pundits across the land were talking about us, about how we took the game to Manchester united and how we would soon start ascending the divisions back to where we belong. Alex Ferguson even admitted we were the better side and said we would soon be back in the Premier league. People at work were being complimentary about Leeds, something very odd indeed was occurring.