Football Fortunes

After a summer of turmoil, Leeds United are appearing in a live televised game for the first time this season.






OK, so it's the Johnstone's Paint Trophy, the butt of all professional football jokes since it's inception in 1983, but they face Darlington tonight on the road to Wembley. It was almost inevitable that the match presenter opened the programme with "Seven years ago, Leeds were in the Champions League", but playing in the football league trophy is hardly the worst thing that could have happened to the club lately.

After being all-but relegated last season, the club exploited a Football League loophole and entered administration due to the long-term debts the club accrued in an ill-fated drive for the Champions League, with unsecured debts totaling £100m at one point before a succession of chairman chipped away at the debt.

Football League rules meant that Leeds incurred a 10-point penalty for their financial situation but, as they were effectively relegated anyway, the club faced the wrath of fellow Football League members.

As it emerged, it was all one big debt avoidance scheme by chairman Ken Bates, a man who himself resides in the tax-haven that is Monte Carlo.

Creditors of the club were vast, ranging from a local mobile DJ, a balloon supplier, St Gemma's Hospice and the St John's Ambulance but it was four main parties that were of major interest in this remarkable saga.

Whilst their was a number of creditors, the bulk of the debt was owed to four parties. Astor Holdings, Krato Trust, Forward Sports Fund and HMRC - the tax man to you and me. But here's the twist: Nobody had ever heard of the former three firms, they were based at various parts of the globe, including the British Virgin Islands, where businesses can set themselves up almost anonymously. The link was that Bates was attached or associated with the three firms all along. He was in a win-win situation. 75% of a creditors vote was needed for a new ownership of the club, yet Bates himself was attached to 45% of the creditors.

Bates promptly made an offer to creditors - you would get 1p back for every £1 you were owed. That meant that a local hospice, who were owed more than £800, would get little more that £8. However, in line with Football League regulations, all 'football creditors' had to be paid. That meant that former players, owed hundreds of thousands of pounds, would receive every penny.

The offer didn't go down too well with the tax-man, who challenged the resulting CVA.

I could go on here but I'll bore you. Long story short, the CVA was scrapped, against Football League rules, and after much uncertainty over whether the club would be allowed to compete, they were eventually, at the eleventh hour, granted entry to League One - with a 15-point deduction and no FA membership.

There was one other Yorkshire side though who weren't so lucky.

Scarborough FC are another football club who had been teetering on the brink of collapse for a number of years.

As the debts mounted, the solution seemed to be to leave their home at Seamer Road and move to a new, purpose built ground on the outskirts of the city. There nothing wrong with the McCain Stadium, I went their myself whilst following Farsley Celtic last season and as a Conference North ground, there few, if any that were better. But the site was prime land for property developers. Flats and apartments were starting to surround the ground and the "Seadogs" wanted to cash-in on the housing boom.

But local politics got in the way. A covenant existed on the site that restricted its use only to sporting activities. There was no way that the site could be sold to a property developer without the covenant being lifted. Despite the club's best efforts to convince the authorities that this plan would save the club, Scarborough Borough Council refused to budge.

Inevitably, the club was wound up. A new club has formed, Scarborough Athletic, in the Northern Counties East League and the club, an offshoot from a side that was facing Chelsea in the FA Cup in 2004, will face Kirkbymoorside this coming Saturday as part of a league campaign that will take in Rainworth Miners Welfare and the Leeds Metropolitan University team.

There are probably intricacies and details that I'm probably not aware of in the case of Scarborough FC, but from the outset, it seems a shame that a local authority was so short-sighted when it came to the state of the club. After insisting that the site at Seamer Road could only be used for sport, they now have a site with no sports team which will, in all likelihood, be sold off to a property developer.

I also type this just hours after Widnes Vikings RLFC themselves entered administration.

In the chase for promotion, they banked heavily on a result which, on Sunday, never came. Today the club are counting the cost of that ambition and, although it would seem unlikely, the sport could lose one of it's great names.

The rugby league authorities are introducing a franchising system from 2009, which would eliminate automatic promotion and relegation and force clubs to build a long-term plan and prove that they are capable of competing in the elite division - both on and off the field. It can't come soon enough.

A rich man's game

It doesn't take a genius to realise that the wallets of professional footballers have been overflowing for the best part of 10 years or more.










Since Alan Shearer's record transfer of what now seems a modest £15m to Newcastle United in 1996, the levels of cash coming into the game, particularly in Britain, seems to have rocketed.

Russian billionaires, American tycoons and celebrity publicists have all had an influence in the games financial growth, but the lions share of the credit, if that's how you want to look at it, goes to an Australian media mogul.

At the Premiership's formation in 1992, Murdoch's newly-launched Sky venture paid the FA £191m over the course of five seasons. From the start of the new season, a total of £2.7bn will be paid over the next three years which will cover almost every medium from terrestrial television highlights and live satellite broadcasting to mobile phone clips and delayed online downloading.
The result is that Premier League player wages are tipped to top a collective £1bn a year, with predictions that the first £200,000 a week player is not far away.

The debate will always rage as to whether such individuals are deserving of such salaries but with those numbers in mind, it's worth taking into consideration the current plight of Leeds United. Guardian football writer David Conn has taken a deep enough look at the financial state of the club and the figures make for surprising reading.

As a result of former chairman Peter Ridsdale handing out cash to players as if it had come with a board game, the club are today contenting with a bill of almost £850,000 to be paid to former players - over £216,000 of which will be heading in the direction of Danny Mills, a player who left the club back in 2003.

Unfortunately, the people responsible for the club's current state are far from the losers in this increasingly sorry affair. A local window cleaning business and mobile DJ will be offered just 1p per pound of the £6,800 they are collectively owed whilst the volunteers of St Johns Ambulance will still be expected to attend Elland Road events next season despite being reimbursed just £1.65 of their £165 expenses claim.

It's not for me to argue how much any individual should or shouldn't get paid and I'll be the first to acknowledge that Leeds United is the very extreme of embarrassing financial mismanagement. I voted with my feet a few years ago, I can't justify to myself paying inflated ticket prices to watch badly managed clubs in an industry that frequently rewards underachievement. The "loyalty"argument that many supporters put forward is pathetic. If any other business in any other industry tried to financially milk them as a customer in such an overt manner, they would take their custom elsewhere without a moments thought.

As unlikely as it is to happen, salary caps would be one of the best things to ever happen to British football. The argument that such a system would have to be Europe wide is true, but I'm yet to find a sport in which salary capping hasn't had at least partial success in saving clubs from themselves and making the competition a better spectacle. The unpredictability of American sports is virtue of a cap system, the Australian NRL likewise and British sports have also benefited from such a system.

In the meantime, supporters will continue to complain about rising cost of Sky subscriptions and increased ticket prices to pay for the latest Portuguese superstar. The chances are though, they'll be complaining whilst stood outside the box office, renewal form in hand.

Over and out

The obituary for Leeds United was finally completed on Saturday afternoon as the club were effectively relegated to the third tier of English football.












United still have the go through the formality of a trip to Derby County this weekend but the reality is that next season Leeds will find themselves slumming it with the mighty Carlisle United, Northampton and Cheltenham Town.

The fall from grace has been a six year story in which the club have been the butt of almost every joke conceivable. It began with an enthusiastic chairman who felt that no price could be put on being Mr Popular, a manager who publicly criticised his players whilst they were sitting at the top of the football tree and then ended with one of the most despised men in football saving the club from financial oblivion.

The finger of blame has pointed in all manner of directions since the club's demise. Ridsdale's financial decisions are what most point to as the start of the road to disaster, O'Leary's book had catastrophic effect on the morale of a team that was arguably the best in the country at that point and a host of unconvincing consortiums and managers couldn't halt the rapid descent down the football ladder.

Ken Bates has since come in, allegedly with the club just two days from liquidation, and has attempted to turn the club around but his methods have been branded madness by those who frequent Elland Road. Ticket prices are now more costly that those found at current Premiership leaders Manchester United, local businesses are being put out of action and the Chelsea connection of Bates, Wise and Poyet has left a bitter taste in the mouth of many.

The future for the club looks bleak. An appeal has been made for investors but their is hardly a long line of local money-men queuing down Elland Road.
The club's assets amount to a handful of players which have limited value between them and the remaining debt of Ridsdale's £100m legacy. The club no longer owns its stadium or training ground, the club's city centre shop has been closed and all that remains of the club for a buyer to purchase is a brand name - and a tarnished one at that. It takes a brave man to pay a seven figure sum for damaged goods and with the 'sold as seen' signs very much on display, many investors will be put off before they get to the initial viewing.

Since 5:30 on Saturday, BBC Radio Leeds has been inundated with callers proclaiming that "we'll be back", but the reality could be very different.

The club will go into pre-season training this coming summer with barely a handful of the players that took to the field this season. 43 players donned the white shirt this term, a statistic that goes some way to explaining why Leeds are just 90 minutes from confirmed relegation barely 12 months after they were 90 minutes from the Premiership. Of the players that are actually contracted to the club, a good few will feel that League One is beneath them and will move on. Healy, Cresswell, Derry, Nicholls, Marques, Blake, Thompson, Flo and of course, the long-serving Gary Kelly will all be looking to the Elland Road exit door in the coming months.

That on its own would be a difficult predicament for any club to find themselves in. Yet with no money to fund new players, Leeds United must not only find a solution, it must do it with increasingly limited resources. One hope is that the youth team will bear fruit and that the likes of Howson and Elliot will be joined by players capable of impressing at the new level. But in the third tier of the game, impressive youngsters soon start to attract the interest of bigger rivals. The 'all new' Leeds United that takes the field in September could well be dismantled come the January transfer window.

Leeds United's fate has been sealed with short-term thinking and throwing money at problems in the hope that they will go away and I fear that, where the situation allows, this will be the case again.

I don't doubt that a club the size of Leeds, in a city the size of Leeds could afford to spend too much time languishing in football's black-hole but at the same time, the fear is that if the solution to the problem involves yet more short-term thinking, then we could be having similar discussions in 24 months time.

Look who has an inferiority complex

I've always wondered if this 'small town chip-on-the-shoulder' mentality is just something of a myth. Something that's just made up by those in the big city to keep the outsiders firmly in their place.


Well thanks to Stephen Cummings at the Burnley Citizen, the small town inferiority complex is alive and well in one Lancashire village.

I can imagine the discussion with the sports editor in the newsroom now. "Steve, we need you to write something about Burnley FC - you OK with that?"
"That's fine, but what if I write something about Leeds United?"
"But we're more than 45 miles from Leeds."
"Yeah I know, but I can write something about Leeds United."
"But why?"
"I just think it'd be really good."

And as it turned out, what he eventually wrote was a waste of everyone's time. The time he spent in writing it, the time of the people who bought and read the Citizen and the time of the Brazilian bloke who probably cut down the tree in the Amazon to begin with.

It's an opinion piece and, like everyone else, he's entitled to his view. This is one person who just happens to be in a privileged position where he can broadcast his opinions publicly. With that privilege though, there has to be some modicum of effort and reasoning behind it. This is just antagonistic ranting for someone obviously trying to make a name for himself.

Stop laughing, it's not funny.

Some of you (not those of you on Virgin Media) may watch that Football soap-opera "Dream Team" on the TV, which attempts to completely fabricate and sensationalise the going's on inside a professional football club.


In just one episode of the said programme, you could expect to find the club to be constantly in debt, have players getting arrested, managers getting sacked, a revolving door to the chairman's office, crap players coming on loan from far-off countries, a relegation or two, several heavy defeats, players giving away team details to the opposition, a chairman publicising an ex directors name and address and a captain that doesn't want to play for the club anymore.

Now, you would all dismiss that story plot as ridiculous. No football club is that badly run. Well, almost no club is that badly run.

It was only May 8th 2001 when Leeds United were knocked out of the Champions League semi-final by Juan Sanchez's hand of god. Since then, bad planning by a chairman with the world's largest overdraft, players in the dock and a destructive book written by an inexperienced manager have led to debts mounting up, relegation from the Premier League, with the club now biding their time on the Championship's death row.

All of that would make a fantsatic television programme in itself but after Saturday's defeat to Sheffield Wednesday it emerges that captain Kevin Nicholls, the man who said in Saturday's programme notes “We are all in this together and we believe we’ll get out of this. I’m not just saying it for the sake of it,” wants to dive head first into the lifeboat.

The future is certainly bleak for the club. Even when next season comes around and the wage bill drops dramatically, the club will still have to look behind the sofa and raid the kids piggy banks if they are going to assemble anything resembling a squad for next season. The club have used a staggering 41 players, many of them loan signings and even with the players that are contracted to the club, the overall financial valuation is minimal.

You could say that relegation would be a blessing in disguise. Manchester City suffered a similar fate not too long ago, used the opportunity to rebuilt the club from the foundations upwards and have now cemented themselves as a Premiership club once more.

At Elland Road however, it may be more complex than that. With crowds further dwindling and the financial viability of the club becoming even more questionable, the future looks exceedingly bleak.

Something amazing has just happened....

..Leeds United have won a league game!!!!!!!!








After last night's 2-1 victory at Hull, Leeds have now gone from 23rd place in the league table to..........24th.

Oh, and good to see Dean Windass was true to his word - Bwahahahahahahaha!

I'm off to buy a lottery ticket before this good feeling goes away!

Vacancy: Football Manager, Location: Anywhere in Yorkshire

Yorkshire's job centres have been pretty busy so far this football season, with all four of the county's Championship managers being handed their P45's.




Firstly, Leeds United manager parted company with Kevin Blackwell. After guiding them to a Championship play-off final last season, the former Sheffield United assistant left Leeds staring relegation to League One in the face and Chairman Ken Bates wasted no time in giving Blackwell the boot and bringing in his old mate Dennis Wise.

Exactly one month later, Sheffield Wednesday boss Paul Sturrock was kicked out of Hillsborough after leaving the club in 21st position and another month went by before Barnsley manager Andy Ritchie joined South Yorkshire's dole queue.

Today, Hull City's Phil Parkinson has completed the quartet after just six months and four wins from 21 games in charge at the KC Stadium.

The league tables don't make enjoyable reading either if you happen to be a Yorkshire sports fan. Of the three relegation spaces, two are occupied by Leeds United and Hull City, Barnsley lie just two points above the drop zone. Sheffield Wednesday can look down on the rest of the region with their comparatively lofty fourteenth league place.

Away from the Coca Cola Championship, things aren't exactly rosy either. Sheffield United are holding their own in the Premiership but in League One, Doncaster Bradford and Huddersfield are struggling, whilst Rotherham are looking nervously at the relegation trap door behind them. In fact, only 2nd place Scunthorpe have anything to crow about.

Quite clearly, we're not that good at this football lark. Perhaps we'd be better off sticking to Rugby instead.

Goodbye Blackwell

Yesterday's announcement that Leeds United had sacked manager Kevin Blackwell would hardly have come across as a suprise.







The former Sheffield United coach ended his three year stay at Elland Road, leaving the club in the relegation zone of the Coca-Cola Championship with just two wins to their name and four league goals, two of which were penalty kicks.
The clubs precarious position and home defeats to Wolverhampton and Sunderland had left the fans calling for Blackwell's head and not even a 3-1 Carling Cup victory over Barnet's second string could save him from the axe of Ken Bates.

After reaching the play-off final in Cardiff last season, United slumped to a humiliating 3-0 defeat and rumours were abound of a bust-up in the camp and those rumours still continue to circulate with regards to players seemingly not seeing eye-to-eye with Blackwell.

The problems arn't just results however. Being someone who infrequently visits Elland Rd, watching the side has been painful. Passing ability is absent, creativity has been missing for months and goals are clearly in short supply. That, coupled with ever increasing ticket prices, has driven supporters away, a problem not helped by the relitive success of the Leeds Rhinos. Yesterday's announcement was an inevitability. For a club that has always claimed that it 'deserved' to be in the Premiership ever since it's relegation 3 seasons ago, it needs a manager capable of getting it to the top flight. Blackwell, as nice a bloke as he came across to be, was out of his depth.

As for a replacement, Alan Curbishley is clearly the fans favourite whilst Claudio Ranieri, someone who has previously worked under Chairman Ken Bates, has been noticed at several United games. Bates may also be tempted to go for another old friend, Dennis Wise but Curbishley is the man in many eyes to lead Leeds back to the big time.