A Boxing Day outing to see Notts County play QPR brought home how football as a business gets away with what would not be tolerated in any other industry.

County have only just come out of administration, having agreed to pay their creditors just 11p for each £1 it owed. Including, pitifully, the East Midlands Ambulance Service, which gave the club ambulances, paramedics and officers at matches in case of casualties in the crowd or on the pitch.

So I thought the club might have taken some lessons to heart, and be doing everything it can to ensure no return to those financial dog days. Ah, but I forgot about the arrogance that surrounds football, keeps it apart from real life, and the blind spot that we are all supposed to have about clubs and their financial mismanagement. Banks, the Revenue, and suppliers large and small can be owed vast fortunes, but the clubs are cut endless slack and allowed to carry on spending blithely.

Their books can be so unbalanced they are in danger of going out and shooting someone, yet somehow, in the end, they get away with irresponsibility on a grand scale - something not allowed to thousands of perfectly decent businesses that go bust every year.

At Notts County I crammed my admittedly expanding frame into a filthy, black plastic bucket seat; kept only half an eye on the game thanks to the pigeons nesting in the rafters, queued for 30 minutes for something called a 'cob' (one person on the tea bar - one person!), then queued again for a post-match beer - only 15 minutes this time, a result.) And I was not alone. There were thousands of us, desperate to spend money but no one to take it.

Now, it is not original to point out that footy fans are not always treated like Prince Charles, and that clubs are not run by financial sophisticates, but the current cry is that clubs have taken to prudent new ways, and are intently fixed on the bottom line.

The Notts County experience shows this to be a nonsense. But if clubs don't change, and pretty quickly too, then one will surely go bust. I detect a tiring amongst financiers of the mismanagement, as well as a realisation that football clubs are not special cases more worthy of being saved than the local engineering company that finds itself on the ropes. And if I was writing in anything other than a Darlington-based newspaper, I might be tempted to say "quite right too".

Ian Reeve is Business Correspondent, BBC TV, North East & Cumbria

* lan Reeve is Business Correspondent, BBC TV North East & Cumbria.

Published: 20/01/2004