Let's see if I've got this straight. Flushed with the success and promise of DOL's "babies", Pete decided to cement our position at or near the apex of European football by splashing tens of millions of pounds on transfers and allowing the wage bill to explode in the hope that revenues would shortly catch up. Revenues, however, fell and the new big salaries meant that most of our playing assets were, in fact, playing liabilities. The haemhorraging of money couldn't be stopped and the PLC went tits up. An enormous debt meant that only an Abramovich could rescue the club so, with no mug Russian in sight and the directors eager to avoid the scrutiny that administration/liquidation would have brought about, Gerald Krasner and Co. stumped up the value of, let's say', a large-ish house in Kensington and assumed the debts with a view to negotiating with creditors to accept that their chances of a full payout were nil. The problem with this is that there was no clean break for the new owners, so the downward spiral continued.
A few years later and truly painted into a corner, the club was open to offers again. There was a charlatan Seb who gives the rest of us Sebs a bad name, a sheik and assorted local bigwigs. It looked as if a proper clean break could be on the cards when up rode Ken, happily assuming old liabilties, because they weren't going to be paid anyway. We got to "within 90 minutes of the Premiership", but anyone in Cardiff could see we were a long way off. The lead balloon kept on falling as the old footballing obligations continued to strangle any recovery. Ken had another go at rearranging the deck chairs, though the process was so opaque and the outcome so inexplicable (who are these creditors that insist on the low bid) that a challenge was surely inevitable. What has made the process of LUFC's decline so elongated is the extraordinary insistence of the FL and the PFA that all "footballing" debts must be honoured. Neither Krasner or Bates have been able to run a Championship club, whilst simultaneously paying for Robbie Fowler's ever expanding property empire. To answer the question "what has Bates done wrong?" I would say that he stands between LUFC and a clean slate. Success will bring costs which should be invested in adjusting to any step up in class and, to my mind, Bates has already had his bite at the cherry. What I don't know is how much Bates stands to lose if his card trick CVA fails to rid him of his tax bill and sundry smaller creditors, but rather sees him ousted from the club. If Redbus changes its name to Whitebus, they can have my (non-existent) vote. Should this evolve into a discussion, I would like it to be noted that from here on I am Person C. Seb _______________________________________________ the Leeds List is an unmoderated mailing list and the list administrators accept no liability for the personal views and opinions of contributors. Leedslist mailing list [email protected] http://list.zetnet.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/leedslist Join The Leeds United Supporters Trust at www.lufctrust.org
