from this morning’s Observer: http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/apr/05/leeds-united-massimo-cellini-takeover
In happier times at Leeds, a genial old press officer by the name of Dick Wright used to tell a story about one trip when Lee Bowyer was having difficulties with the menu at one of the fancy hotels where the team was staying. Dick was the go-to man for the players back then, popular enough that Lucas Radebe wrote an obituary when he died last year, and he ended up recommending Bowyer tried the halibut steak. Halfway through the meal, he noticed the player looking at his plate suspiciously. The chairman, Peter Ridsdale, was at the same table. "What's the food like, Lee?" he asked. "Umm, not bad," Bowyer replied, without sounding like he really meant it. A few mouthfuls later, he looked back up. "Dick," he said, "this steak's a bit fishy, isn't it?" The laughter stopped at Elland Road a short time later, as the full effects of Ridsdale's overspending started to take hold. Dick was one of the first casualties, never mind the fact he probably earned less in a year than Seth Johnson did in a week. Then came the fire sale of players and the full-on, authentic crisis. Leeds had been so busy staring at the stars they hadn't noticed the lamp-post directly in front of them. It was some collision, and just a shame the bang to the head did not knock more sense into them. The ripple effects are still being felt now. "I've never known a club like it," Kevin Blackwell, the manager fourth in line after David O'Leary, said a few years later. "If it can go wrong, it will go wrong." And here we are, coming up to 10 years since that quote, and the place is still foaming with frustration: the most irrational, eccentric, self-defeating, dysfunctional, implausible football club in the country. A club that seems hell-bent on turning incompetence into an art form. A club where every good idea feels like beginner's luck and the next lamp-post is always around the corner. This season has been painfully typical and nobody can be entirely sure where it all leads now Massimo Cellino has successfully appealed against the Football League barring his takeover. On the one hand, Leeds have just opened their doors to a convicted fraudster, at a time when English football is supposed to be taking greater care about who it lets in. On the other, the alternative for Leeds was so unappealing most supporters had already aligned themselves with the new man anyway. Cellino had said the club would go bankrupt without his input and even if that was just an emotional reaction it was certainly not a good sign that the players were going unpaid. Leeds were docked 10 points when they went into administration in 2007, and another 15 later that year because of the next phase of mismanagement. The relevant people always said the same would not happen again. It was, however, threatening to be a return to the days when supporters wore T-shirts saying: "2004 Premiership, 2005 Championship, 2007 Sinking Ship, 2008 Abandon Ship." They won't expect your sympathy for everything that has happened since and, being Leeds, they probably won't get a great amount either. Yet I have never gone in for that hive-mind mentality that Leeds automatically have to be disliked. They matter. They are an important club and it puzzles me, putting together a list of all the pros and cons, that they have found it so difficult to attract serious, life-changing money from credible people without having to go through all this palaver. They don't own their stadium. The training ground has been sold and the debts, haemorrhaging £1m every month, are an obvious and instant turn-off. But just consider what they do have going for them in a vibrant one-club city, with the third largest population in the UK, a huge catchment area (the Leeds City Region, the largest economy centre outside London, puts it at 3 million), international support and that sleeping-giant history. All sorts of other clubs, with less appealing selling points, have attracted the super-rich. Yet here are Leeds – once-mighty Leeds – asking players to defer their wages and pinning their hopes on a man who was described on an arrest warrant in Sardinia last year as having "marked criminal tendencies … capable of using every kind of deception to achieve his ends". In ordinary circumstances, a sensible club would run a mile. These, of course, are not ordinary circumstances and, just like those Manchester City fans who happily made the most of Thaksin Shinawatra, nobody should be too surprised that a few Yorkshiremen do not seem too fussed about Cellino's history, as long as he is as loaded as everyone says. All the same, the Football League's owners-and-directors' test is there, supposedly, to safeguard clubs and it is easy to understand why they wanted to pull down the shutters. It doesn't root out everyone, as the supporters of Portsmouth, Birmingham and a few others can testify, but there is a sound reason for its existence. And now an independent QC has ruled in Cellino's favour? They may as well rip it up and start again. It was not the fact Cellino sacked 35 managers in 21 years with his hometown club, Cagliari, that was the issue. Nor that he once moved Cagliari's home games to Trieste, 500 miles away on the Italy-Slovenia border. It was that he had just been found guilty of tax evasion, to go with two previous convictions for multimillion-pound fraud. Of course, the league wanted to keep him out. Cellino is certainly an unlikely saviour. He is also surprisingly naive, judging by the call he took last week from "a Leeds United fan, can we talk for two minutes?" and the ensuing warts-and-all debate about what he really thought of the club. "The team is shit," will give you a flavour. "The worst team I saw in my life." What he did not realise was that he was being recorded for an online show. But regardless of the rights and wrongs of that, how many people in football would spill their professional secrets to a stranger who had rung out of the blue and not even given a name? Unfortunately, that fits in neatly with the club that Leeds have become. Former owners Gulf Finance House (GFH) were barely seen at Leeds this season. The players are still owed 35% of their salaries for March and a culture of extravagance clearly lives on. Not of Ridsdale-esque proportions, admittedly, but there are still times when Leeds come across like a gambler on a bad streak, jamming everything into the slot machines and hoping it will turn out OK. "A dangerous club, an expensive club," Cellino said. "Eighteen million on wages! For a shit team like that. You shouldn't spend £5m on wages. Not £18m." He had a point. Leeds signed Noel Hunt from Reading last summer, on £25,000 a week according to Cellino, and the forward has not managed a single goal. They also paid £1m to sign Luke Murphy from Crewe – "I don't remember his name," Cellino said – and bumped him up from £1,700 a week to £22,000. "Are you fucking crazy?" Cellino asked. Brian McDermott, the increasingly beleaguered manager, is probably in the best position to answer that – if he gets the time. He has already been sacked by Cellino once. GFH reinstated him immediately but Cellino has the power now and McDermott will not last long. All that can be said for certain is that he has tried to bring a bit of dignity into the equation. Someone had to. Most of the others could do with having their heads banged together. Some people leave a mark on a football club. At Leeds, they tend to leave a stain. First Ridsdale. Then the unpleasantness of the Ken Bates era. Now GFH. It is the story of how not to run a football club, and it will be the thickest, heaviest book on your shelf. Their supporters might not expect our sympathy but they deserve it. _______________________________________________ Leedslist mailing list Info and options: http://mailman.greennet.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/leedslist To unsubscribe, email [email protected] John 'Grampa' Sykes Rest In Peace old lad 28th Oct 1938 - 12 Nov 2013 MARCHING ON TOGETHER
