21st - Darlington

And so the Darlington soap opera carries on.....

Both Darlo and ourselves make up the two longest serving teams in the division by quite some distance. Without checking, I think Macclesfield are the third longest which puts it into some sort of context. But whilst we've maintained our position through perhaps being the most stable club in existence, Darlo have had a prolonged spell in League Two by stumbling from one off the field crisis to another.

Much of that had been put down to the days of George Reynolds and consigned along with his hair clip to history, but recent shenanigans have seen Darlo enter their second period of administration in just a few years having run up a reputed debt of £5 million during that time.

In a fantastic act of shifting the culpability, the stadium has been largely blamed again for the size of the debt, whilst the wage bill remained at astronomical levels for a side who's average attendance last season was less than our own.

What the future holds for Darlo is unclear. They remain at time of writing in administration, so I suppose anything could still happen. But the plan is and has been for some time for owner George Houghton to be the man to take Darlo out of administration, and then immediately sell the club to former director Rav Singh.

Now I dare say we'll hear many tales from Darlington about how they have suffered as a result of all of this, and last season's Play Off push was certainly derailed because of entering administration, but when one man can make a club a more attractive proposition by entering administration, wiping out debt at less than a penny in the pound, then take them out of admin himself before selling, then there is something seriously wrong both in football and in this individual case.

I have no doubt that when Singh takes over that, we'll be told that it was the fault of the old board rather than the current one, and why should the fans be punished for the actions of one man. We heard it all from Luton and frankly it doesn't wash. Clubs / individuals are profiting from administration, despite the points penalties, when it should be the very, very last resort for any club. Of course, nobody wants to see a club go out of business. Teams like Darlington have too much history and mean too much to the 3000 who turn up week in week out to watch them.

But until clubs are punished with enforced relegation of at least one division, then administration will always remain a more viable proposition. Faced with the prospect of liquidation or relegation, the 3000 would always take the relegation rather than Saturday afternoons of wondering what to do.

Is it fair that the likes of Morecambe have to terminate a player's loan for financial reasons, only to find that very same player sign for Darlington a matter of weeks later and then find out that in doing so, Darlo had not been operating under the same rules as they were forced to?

Maybe we need to see a club go out of business to help educate football that they are existing in the real world, rather than an over protected old boys club which operates above the financial laws in this country. Some have called it cheating. Some have likened it to gaining an advantage in the same way an athlete uses banned substances. Either way it will always go on until someone either goes to the wall or is given sufficient punishment to make owners scared to death of administration.

Anyway, rant over.

On the field, there's been something of a revolution taking place at Darlington over the Summer, with very few of the players who came to Spotland in late April still being with the club for their first game of the season.

Indeed, even the manager has changed. When Dave Penney left for pastures Biffo, Colin Todd was dragged out of what many assumed was the retirement home to take over at the Darlington Arena. The decision to appoint Todd was certainly one from out of the left field and whilst many will remember the wonderful job that he did with Bolton, fewer will actually remember anything that he's done since, and successive sackings at Derby, Bradford and Swindon led him to spending the last couple of years managing in Denmark.

He's sixty years old now, and having never managed at this level before, is he really the man capable of basically starting from scratch with a Darlo side which was left with no more than a couple of players in the Summer? Was he appointed because he was the best option to bring the club back from the death, or was he the only one prepared to put his name against a job that was touch and go whether it would still be there by the time the new season kicked off?

Either way, he's not hung around waiting for something to happen, and fair play to him for that. Ten signings were announced on one day, and whilst it remains unclear whether those signings are proper putting pen to paper signings with the club still being in administration, it was a great start for a club reputedly left with just one player at one point.

But reports, and we can only go off reports, have suggested that the new wage bill is a pittance from previous years, with the whole squad being paid approximately half of Pawel Abbott's weekly wages for the past two years. Well perhaps not quite, but the suggestions are that soon to be new man Singh is clear about the club being run within their means, and whilst any "believe it when I see it" will be understandable, the quality of the signings would suggest there's something to this.

Our old striker Lee Thorpe is the sort of signing that would say that funds are tight. No disrespect to Thorpe, as he clearly did a job for Dale over the past eighteen months or so, but his better days are behind him and injuries limited him to playing in only around half the games that he was eligible for. Signings of such suggest the purse strings are very much tightened.

And with a pre-season friendly cancelled due to a lack of available players, things might be a touch tougher for Darlo than we realise and maybe, just maybe, financial reality has finally arrived in the North East and whilst it may take a season or two to find their feet, fans can at long last remain satisfied that there will always be a Darlo to support.

So all in all, we can't see it being anything other than a tough season for the Quakers. With just a couple of players remaining from last season, they've got to hope that a manager from the Danish leagues can work with a set of players that basically had nowhere else to go and do enough to see them through this season.

It could work in their favour, as they'll adopt a backs to the wall attitude from the first day and won't naively go into the season thinking about an outside chance of the Play Offs. It's all about survival, and with arguably the division's best defender in Stephen Foster at the back, they will always stand a chance.

We think they'll be okay. Just.

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