: >>You are always sticking up for our multimillionaire owner on the grounds that we, the biggest club in the Football League, cannot possibly compete with clubs with "sugardaddy owners" (whatever they are) and with clubs that have parachute payments.<< I'm not sticking up for him. I'm simply presenting the fact that we are at a significant financial disadvantage to many of our rivals. You call Bates a "multimillionaire". Estimates put his wealth at between £20m and £30m. This makes him one of the least wealthy club owners in the Championship. By "sugardaddy" I mean an owner so wealthy that owning a football club is essentially a hobby. People whose wealth is secure and so large that very large sums can be invested, with minimal return, in hauling a club up the leagues. Generally this means a fortune of upwards of £500m - like Marcus Evans at Ipswich, as an example. FourFourTwo magazine reckon he's worth £510m. So he's in the region of 20 times more wealthy than Bates. Bates is not a sugardaddy. He's a businessman who's looking to make a return out of Leeds, which he acquired for nothing. The sooner he achieves his goal the better, as it is likely to mean a new owner will be able to take us to the next level.
But we have had the biggest gate receipts of any Football League club for several years running. We have had the monies from televised cup ties against Liverpool, Man U (twice), Arsenal (twice plus one replay) and Spurs (plus a replay).<< This is a drop in the ocean. Gate receipts cannot compete with a billionaire investor. TV money from ITV for a cup game is measured in thousands, not millions. Might pay Darren O'Dea's salary for a few weeks. >>We have had several millions of pounds (probably more than several) from Chelsea, Spurs, Everton and Atletico Madrid nicking our kids. We have also had the many millions of pounds from the sales of Delph, Schmeichel, Gradel and Howson.<< Total this up and it adds up to, at best, around £20m over about four years. Some of it probably hasn't yet been paid (elements of the Delph deal dependent on appearances, for example). Again, nothing like the parachute payments and nothing like the wealth available even to the likes of Bristol City or Doncaster Rovers via their owners. >>Barring the gate receipts, all the other streams of income I just mentioned should have been "bonus" monies above and beyond what Bates, Harvey et al budgeted for (by his own admission, Bates budgets to go out of the cups in the earliest rounds). I see no evidence that those monies have been re-invested in the playing staff.<< Only that Bates said the £9m player budget had been overspent and had reached £11.5m. Where did the extra £2.5m come from? >> The most glaring example of this is Bates' two-facedness over the sale of Howson, telling the supporters that the money would go straight into Simon's transfer kitty (just as he said the Gradel money would), but then telling Simon to do one when he asked for some of that money for a new midfielder to replace the club captain that Bates had just sold. << If Bates was about to sack SG, would he have signed a player who the next manager might not want? I agree there's an odour of bullshit around the "£1.5 million midfielder" story for sure. >>The example of Norwich proves that we should have been able to get out of this division by now. Bates either hired the wrong manager (no reason why we couldn't have hired Lambert before Norwich did) or failed to back his preferred manager.<< Maybe Lambert is a better manager than Grayson? Maybe he had lower expectations to manage? He's done an exceptional job - but let's not forget that SG got us to within a whisker of the playoffs last season. >>Just out of interest, are you convinced that Bates and his "backers" have no financial interest in the current ownership of the ground and Thorpe Arch (i.e. that when the club writes a check every year to cover the rent of those properties, that none of that money doesn't go - perhaps circuitously - back to Bates and his "backers")?<< You know, I couldn't care less. It appears to be legal. The deal appears simply to "park" the issue of ground ownership in a way that can be resolved in the future at an agreed price. Sure, we pay rent for ER/TA, but if we bought them back we'd have to service the borrowings that would be needed to buy them back. We might be a little better off but it wouldn't make a huge difference. If the arrangement makes Leeds more saleable, which it does, you should all be in favour of it, surely? _______________________________________________ Leedslist mailing list Info and options: http://mailman.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/leedslist To unsubscribe, email [email protected] PETE CASS (1962 - 2011) Rest In Peace Mate
