There's been plenty of discussion over the much-derided "fit and proper person test" which aims to keep bad men out of the beautiful game. Does it mean anything? Would Adolf Hitler have been approved? We do wonder.

Not to tar any current owner with the Hitler brush, of course, but with murky questions hovering over Notts County and Munto Finance, as well as Ken Bates' "ownership" of Leeds United, it's time the Football League got themselves a backbone. Which brings us to Flavio Briatore, the disgraced F1 boss who is part owner of Championship outfit Queens Park Rangers.

Now, Briatore is, in a way, banned from F1 after fixing a race by telling one of his drivers to crash, thus forcing out the safety car to hand the race leader guaranteed victory. Football League clubs cannot be owned by anyone who is banned by the governing body of another sport.

Simple? It seems not. Technically, it is the F1 teams who are banned from engaging in work with Briatore, and not Briatore who is banned by F1. Get it? So does that mean Briatore can stay at Loftus Road?

It should not, or so says respected journo Patrick Barclay in his column in The Times,

I know we live in a litigious age, but I cannot see the point of tiptoeing around this fellow. If Formula One can ditch him, so can football. The only “response” sought from Briatore should be how long it will take to clear his desk. The FIA has told him that he can no longer be even a spectator and football should follow suit.

Instead, “due process” is observed. The very phrase reeks of fear, of authority in retreat, the posture of most governing bodies over recent years. Even the new FA, under Lord Triesman, has started bending over backwards to please agents, allowing them to perform “dual representation” of club and player in transfers when every independent inquiry has deemed it unethical.

The Football League, under Lord Mawhinney, has made progress on this front, insisting that clubs report all commissions paid to agents and publishing totals annually, and we had high hopes on the fit and proper persons front when Mawhinney proclaimed the “ground-breaking” innovation of a test for directors in 2004.

Without mentioning the Premier League, he talked of “new standards of corporate governance in football” and praised chairmen for a “brave decision” that would prevent “the good work of the vast majority of club directors from being tarnished by a handful of rogue individuals”.

Basically it banned those convicted of fraud or dishonesty, or rejects from other sports (in other words, people like Briatore), and a year later it was extended to people who had been sent to prison for 12 months or more, or placed on the sex offenders’ register.

What it did not say is how the League would know. And thus we come to the situation at Notts County, where a bizarre and opaque takeover leaves the game looking helpless and incapable of policing itself.

Surely the time to clear up “outstanding issues” is before a club are taken over, not after, when dark hints in the press appear to have jolted the League into action.

It is amazing that League rules have never been changed to this effect. Poor Notts County; we must fear for them, for there are signs that the supply of sheikhs is running out and the quality of sub-prime Arabs deteriorating.

Over at the tabloids, and Steve Howard is a very perplexed man in The Sun, and rightly so.

Kasabian may currently be singing Where did all the love go, but for Howard he's a bit miffed that quality keepers, once a job an Englishman could be proud of, have diappeared.

A quick glance at the World Cup squad of 1990 that brought home just how far England have now slipped in what many claim to be the most important position in international football.

And just how serious a problem Fabio Capello faces in the build-up to South Africa next year.

In the back row were four outstanding keepers - Shilton, David Seaman, Chris Woods and Dave Beasant.

Beasant, the former Wimbledon, Newcastle and Chelsea stalwart, would stand a good chance of walking straight into the England team that faces Ukraine here in Dnipropetrovsk tomorrow were he still playing.

Two decades ago, he was fourth choice. Around the same time there were other top-class performers like Nigel Martyn and Tim Flowers.

Every one was cool and calm in the line of fire. If only we could say the same about the current crop, a small band of goalkeeping brothers known more for their nervous flapping and floundering.

Incredibly, last weekend just SIX Premier League clubs had Englishmen in goal.

David James (Portsmouth), Robert Green (West Ham), Paul Robinson (Blackburn), Ben Foster (Man United), Chris Kirkland (Wigan) and Joe Hart (Birmingham).

Of those six clubs, five are in the bottom nine. The sixth - United - can hardly wait to welcome back Edwin van der Sar after a string of poor displays by Foster.

Sage words.