These were the words of Hugh Robertson, then Britain's Sports Minister, six years ago.

Most will argue that these words still ring true today.

Plus ça change. The more it changes, the more it stays the same.

Not much has been changed at the Wembley headquarters of the English Football Association (FA), except some of the policy-making executive personnel.

The condemnation by Robertson - now Sir Hugh and chair of the British Olympic Association - coincided with an appearance by FA executives before a Parliamentary Select Committee to discuss the governance of the nation's number one sport, and how it might be enhanced.

Little seems to have happened, judging by the fact that the FA are once again up before the beaks at the House of Commons next week, this time to explain their handling - or rather mishandling - of the matters appertaining to the Mark Sampson affair.

The former manager of the successful England women's team was recently sacked.

The governing body’s chief executive, Martin Glenn, said the decision to terminate Sampson's £150,000  ($198,000/€168,000) a year contract was obvious after he became aware of the "full detail" of alleged inappropriate relationships the Welshman had with female players while he was manager of Bristol Academy five years ago.

It is the second time in less than a year that Glenn has been forced to explain the departure of an England manager for off-field reasons.

Questions about whether due diligence was done in the hiring of Sampson are bound to be asked, particularly as it comes almost 12 months to the day since Sam Allardyce departed from his role as the newly-appointed manager of the England men's team after a newspaper sting.

FA executives have been summoned by the Government's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee on October 18 to explain their role in dealing with the whole situation.

They are now likely to be questioned on why they did not request sight of the full safeguarding report sooner, given what prominence Sampson occupied in the women's game.

Tracey Crouch, the current Minister for Sport, has said: "This situation is a mess and raises very serious questions about whether the historic processes that the FA had in place around the recruitment of coaches were appropriate, for something like this to have been missed. The FA are right to have taken action but reassurance is needed to make sure this does not happen again at any level of coaching."

Successive Sports Ministers have bemoaned the apparent lack of foresight and strong leadership at the FA, where despite efforts to modernise the structure of the organisation, it remains cluttered with ancient blazers whose main concern seems to be studying the wine list at post-match banquets rather than what is happening on and off the field.

One might argue that it was ever thus and in view of the FA's subservience to the all-powerful Premier League it will remain so ad infinitum.

Which is a shame because now more than ever football's unkempt house needs to be in order, rather than its governing body being continually deemed unfit for purpose.

The FA are well-meaning but desperately stranded between reform and tradition.

As columnist Oliver Holt pointed out in the Mail on Sunday, never were such contradictions more brutally illustrated than their abject handling of the Sampson saga, which included their insistence that a non-white lawyer head up an investigation into striker Eni Aluko's separate complaint of racism against Sampson. For FA, read PC.

On top of this we have the hapless appointments of excessively-paid England managers and the dull, dour and frequently stultifying performances of the men's team, which has shown little, if any, improvement under new boss Gareth Southgate.

Oh yes, they have won matches and qualified for the next World Cup by scraping wins with goals from breakaways, set pieces or penalties against opposition that has been in the main a bit ropey - rather like those hand-picked patsies for boxing prodigies.

As it has been pointed out by numerous critics, England seem to have gone backwards from the Euros.

Southgate is a pleasant bloke with a good football brain, but like his teams he lacks personality and pizzazz. We all know they are not going to win the World Cup in Russia, and yet again probably won’t even come close once the big boys come out to play.

Mind you, in fairness you could combine the attributes of Jose Mourinho, Pep Guardiola, Sir Alex Ferguson and even an exhumed Sir Alf Ramsey to coach the team and the outcomes would still be the same.

For one simple reason: The players are not good enough.

Maybe the politicians who sit in judgement next week under the leadership of the ubiquitous Damien Collins MP, who seems to consider himself a de facto Sports Minister these days, should also be asking the FA why this is so.

Or perhaps they should re-direct the question to the Premier League, whose enthusiastic encouragement of relatively cheap foreign imports has diminished the employment and advancement of the sort of home-grown talent which won the World Cup over half a century ago.