Ken Bates: Lunch with the Leeds chairman, and it really is a blast...
The Brian Viner Interview: Age has not mellowed him. From Ferguson to
Abramovich, he directs his notorious ire at the football elite past and
present, and a former prime minister
Sitting with Ken Bates, at his usual table outside the Cafe de Paris in
Monte Carlo - "this is my office," he says - is something of an
education. In half an hour the Leeds United chairman, very happy to be
an expatriate on account of everything that is wrong with Britain and
right with Monaco, offers me the potted life histories of four
passers-by, points out Turkey's richest man, recounts his last exchange
with the retail magnate Sir Philip Green (who was shabbily dressed, so
Bates quipped that he'd clearly been shopping in his own stores),
lambasts the late Chelsea striker Peter Osgood, flirts with a toddler
peering over her mum's shoulder, and earns the devotion of a pretty
waitress by pressing an extravagant tip into her hand. Through all this,
his charming wife Susannah and I scarcely get a word in edgeways.
Undiminished at 78, Bates didn't get where he is today without exerting
his forceful personality.
We move on to a swanky hotel, where he is well-known by the staff, and
well-liked, doubtless thanks to his tipping policy. He has booked a
table for lunch, at which he sits alongside Susannah. He commands me to
sit opposite her, so that she won't feel left out of the conversation,
and later, when she briefly leaves the table, he half-rises, another
display of old-fashioned gallantry which seems at odds with his
enthusiastic effing, blinding and occasional C-ing. "Please don't use
that word," says Susannah, gently. It is a futile protest.
Bates operates according to his own rules, and hang those who do not
like them. That's how he made his millions, initially in ready-mix
concrete, and how he runs football clubs. He has been owner or chairman
of Oldham Athletic, Wigan Athletic, Partick Thistle, Chelsea and now
Leeds United, although there remains some uncertainty about who exactly
owns Leeds. It appears to be the Forward Sports Fund, registered in the
Cayman Islands, but when I invite him to explain who this organisation
comprises, he picks up my tape recorder and threatens to throw it into
the sea. "Don't sour a nice lunch," he snaps. "We have complied with
Football League regulations, it's all on the website, and there it is."
I venture a supplementary question. "I've just said I'm not going to
elaborate, so don't push it. Better men than you have failed."
"Lesser," murmurs Susannah, sweetly. "Lesser men."
We move on to the slightly less contentious issue of his managers. Kevin
Blackwell was in charge at Leeds when Bates took over in January 2005,
and lasted until September 2006. Blackwell was followed by Dennis Wise,
then Gary McAllister, who was sacked, though the chairman considers him
"a very honourable guy". He pauses to order an expensive bottle of
Sancerre, and to kid the waiter that I am actually an inspector with
Relais & Chateaux and that I think the service is crap. "Great players
who become managers, and Gary was a great player, have problems
adjusting to players not as good as them. 'I could do it, why the bloody
hell can't you?' I had that at Oldham with Jimmy McIlroy, and I had it
with [Glenn] Hoddle at Chelsea."
The incumbent, Simon Grayson, is by general acclaim one of the finer
managers outside the Premier League; indeed, I express some surprise
that he was not in the frame for the Aston Villa job. "Well, Simon was
approached by Burnley last season. They offered him a lot more money
than we could afford to pay him, but he said no. He wanted to finish the
job he'd come to Leeds to do. But loyalty is a two-way thing. I'm loyal
to my managers until they can't or don't deliver. Unfortunately, Dennis
and [his assistant] Gus Poyet thought the grass was greener elsewhere.
It wasn't. Dennis's time at Newcastle was a complete disaster. And I
heard about Poyet leaving on Sky Sports News. Then he wanted to come
back as manager. No fucking chance. Nobody lets me down twice."
Grayson, meanwhile, has taken Leeds back into the Championship, where
they currently lie sixth. The present and future are manifestly looking
brighter than they have for some time at Elland Road, and no fewer than
11 new players were brought in this summer (albeit not at much expense),
yet several Leeds fans of my acquaintance tell me that there is more
than a little disgruntlement with Bates, not least because of hikes in
ticket prices.
He snorts with derision when I raise this. "It's the same at every club.
They all want their club to buy Ronaldo and let them in for fucking
free. Listen, [Peter] Ridsdale bust the club, and the guys who took over
then sold the assets. We pay £2m in rent, which goes up 3 per cent a
year, to play football at Elland Road. That works out at £7 per ticket
per game. Then there's the rates bill, which is horrendous. The police
charges are horrendous. People say, what about that money you got for
[Fabian] Delph? Well, what about the wage bill? What about the £2m we've
spent to maintain the bloody ground because it's falling apart? In fact,
we've spent nearly £10m since we took over."
Irritation flushes his cheeks. "People say 'Let kids in for free'. Why
should we let kids in for free? One woman asked me to do a deal for
students. She said her son can't afford to come. Then get a bloody job.
The disabled get a helper in for free if they pay for a full-price
ticket, which means they both get in at half-price. I'm not being funny
but if you've got a bad back, do you need a helper? We asked them to
come in to prove they're disabled, and some of them did a runner, which
isn't bad if you're disabled." A bellow of laughter; I suspect that
nobody amuses Ken quite as much as Ken. "The worst scroungers," he
continues, "are those who can afford to pay, and that includes pop
stars. There's no such thing as a complimentary ticket; it's just paid
for by someone else." At least he doesn't have a problem at Leeds with
ex-players demanding freebies, which was one of the banes of his life at
Chelsea (a cue for Osgood to get another dishonourable mention). Most
clubs, he thinks, are far too indulgent. "All over England you find Mr
Bigs throwing tickets round for free. As soon as a clever businessman
goes in the boardroom door, his brains go out the window. But if you
give away free tickets, you're being generous with the money of the guy
who stands behind the goal and can't afford to go on holiday. When I was
chairman at Wembley [for a time he chaired the Football Association
company charged with redeveloping the stadium] we had Tony Blair as
guest of honour. That meant an invitation for him and his wife. But we
got a request for five tickets, all in the front row. I told them to
fuck off."
The biggest of football's Mr Bigs, if only in terms of financial means,
is of course the Manchester City owner, Sheikh Mansour. Does Bates
despair at the economic lunacy being perpetrated in order to give a very
rich man what he wants? "No. It goes in cycles. [Roman] Abramovich [to
whom Bates sold Chelsea in 2003, reportedly making a £17m profit] is
cutting back, isn't he? And at the end of the day, there's no
achievement. If Man City do the treble this year, big bloody deal. So
what. What have they achieved? Fuck all."
Yes, but the record books in 50 years' time will still show a City
treble. "Yes, and it will still have no value. Let me tell you a story.
The moment my relationship with Mr Abramovich's entourage went wrong was
in August 2003, when [Abramovich's adviser] Eugene Tenenbaum said to me,
'When are we going to make a profit?' I burst out laughing. I said,
'You've just put £20m on the cost structure, and you've done it without
speaking to the chairman', as I then was. I would have been a good
chairman for Abramovich. I bought them in 1982 [reportedly for £1] when
they were bloody bankrupt, and for 10 years from 1994 we played in four
FA cup finals, won two of them, won the League Cup, the Cup-Winners'
Cup, got to the quarter-final of the Champions League, all on the smell
of an oily rag. Now that's an achievement. I genuinely thought when
Abramovich bought the club that he would use his money to accelerate
down the road I was already on. Instead he went mad. I said to them,
'Man United must be laughing their fucking socks off. [Juan Sebastian]
Veron and [Peter] Kenyon... they've sold you two lemons in three weeks.'"
If Bates had known before he signed Chelsea over to Abramovich what he
knows now, would he still have done the deal? "I couldn't possibly
answer that question over a lengthy alcoholic lunch without due notice."
But with the benefit of hindsight, I suspect he might have done things
differently. "Look at Alex Ferguson. Not a very likeable person but you
have to admire what he's done without any external funding. Look at
Arsène Wenger. I dislike him immensely, and it was me who nicknamed him
'Arsehole Whinger', but again, look at what he's done. He has a
fantastic scouting system, his teams play exciting football..."
Another pause, to order another bottle of Sancerre and rib the waiter
again. "People talk about Arsenal's debt, but you have to distinguish
between debts against assets, and debts against waste. Ridsdale borrowed
millions and pissed it up against the wall on players. Nothing to show
for it. Arsenal have £300m of debt but that's against property. When I
left, Chelsea had £90m of debts, but they had assets. At Leeds, I'm
building the castle on stone, not sand. What you have to do in football
is generate business that doesn't depend on that 25-year-old pillock who
misses an open goal in the 89th minute. You use the supporter base but
generate non-football business: weddings, conferences, bar mitzvahs. I
preached that at Chelsea and they all took the piss, now they're all
copying me."
What nobody has copied is the notorious Bates programme notes. At
Chelsea, and now at Leeds, he shamelessly uses his chairman's page to
peddle a decidedly right-wing (he chuckles when I say Thatcherite) view
of the world. Take this example, from the Leeds v MK Dons game shortly
before the general election: "You could, as I have been urged to do,
vote for the Icelandic Volcano Party. After all, they have done more to
stop immigration in the last seven days than Labour has for 13 years."
And that in the city that returned Denis Healey to Parliament for many
years.
But Bates insists that supporters love his programme notes. "When I
stopped writing them at Chelsea, programme sales fell by 10 per cent. At
Leeds, it's the first page people turn to. The media call me
controversial because I talk straight. They slag me off from their ivory
towers." He names the journalists he considers the worst miscreants.
"Sports writer of the year, what does that mean? A load of plonkers
voted him the least worst of the rest of them." He asks why [Premier
League chairman] Dave Richards got a knighthood. "For the bloody work
he's done for the NSPCC over 40 years, that's what. What have they ever
done for charity, these slaggers-off? What have they ever achieved? I
woke up at two o'clock last night and what did I do? I redesigned the
East Stand."
Unarguably, Bates has wrought considerable improvements in the
infrastructure at Elland Road, and despite embracing the Leeds cause so
late in life, maintains that nobody values the heritage of the club more
than he does. "Howard Wilkinson is the second-most successful manager in
Leeds' history, yet there was nothing there in his name, not a thing. So
we opened a pub called Howard's Way, and now we're opening a new
restaurant called Howard's. It opens this Saturday, and he will be our
honoured guest."
I have an irresistible question: what happens if Wilkinson wants to
bring along the rest of his family for a free dinner? "Then he can fuck
off." This time, Susannah and I laugh heartily too. It has certainly
been an entertaining three hours, my lunch with Mr and Mrs Bates, and it
ends on an interesting note. He normally charges for interviews, he
tells me, but this time he will waive his fee, as long as I pick up the
(€296) bill. Inwardly, and possibly outwardly too, I quail. I would
normally expect to buy lunch for an interviewee, but he has invited
Susannah, he has chosen the venue, he has ordered - and reordered - the
wine, and I have assumed all along that his largesse with the staff
would extend to the very substantial tab. It is only as I walk back to
Monte Carlo's station that I realise what a stupid assumption this was.
A free lunch? For a hack? You must be bloody joking.
Bates on Ferguson and Wenger
"Ferguson's not very likeable, and I dislike Wenger immensely, but you
have to admire what they've done".
Bates on Manchester City
"If City do the treble this year, it will have no value. What will they
have achieved?".
Bates on the Blairs
"Free tickets? They cost the fans who can't afford holidays. When Tony
Blair and his wife were guests of honour at Wembley, we got a request
for five free tickets!".
Bates on Abramovich
"When Abramovich bought the club he went mad. I said to them, 'Man
United must be laughing their socks off. Veron and Kenyon... they've
sold you two lemons in three weeks'".
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