Harty upsets the leeds fan

[7:18]

Thank you Clapham, given the extensive e-mail abuse I have received predominantly from the North of England in the last two hours, it will be a lesson learnt for some time.

And thanks to you Bozzaangel for your pearls of wisdom.

one more for 1000 harty, make it a good one!

 

[clapham_gull]

With points deductions for other circumstances (like administration) etc - don't other clubs HAVE to agree?
What makes Leeds so different?

Bit of a grey area Yorkie, the other sanctions are explicitly written down whilst this one wasn't.

The fact that Leeds wouldn't have been able to play this season if they didn't agree to this "new" punishment makes it a bit murky.

I honestly playing devils advocate over all this, I hope they don't get their points back - but I wouldn't be surprised under the circumstances they get some back.

The league need to sort their punishments out, not makes them up as they go along.

 

[Harty]

Did they go something along the lines of

Dear Mr Hart

I very, very sorry to interupt your busy schedule, but as a Leeds fan and a long admirer of your show and support of that lovely team from Brighton, I would like to point out that....

No but it the use of the word 'C**t' is into double figures, and I've had one threat to burn my house down which I have forwarded on to both the Police and Worthing Fire Brigade.

 

[Yorkie]

Bit of a grey area Yorkie, the other sanctions are explicitly written down whilst this one wasn't.

The fact that Leeds wouldn't have been able to play this season if they didn't agree to this "new" punishment makes it a bit murky.

I honestly playing devils advocate over all this, I hope they don't get their points back - but I wouldn't be surprised under the circumstances they get some back.

The league need to sort their punishments out, not makes them up as they go along.

I hope the High Court judge on the panel takes a dim view of a club trying to swindle the tax man out of £7 million.

 

[clapham_gull]

I hope the High Court judge on the panel takes a dim view of a club trying to swindle the tax man out of £7 million.

Well you could argue Yorkie that the FL insistance that football creditors are at the front of the queue also helps to create a situation like that.

 

[SNOOBS]

In fairness, Leeds on the pitch have been absolutely outstanding most of this season and, even as a Man Utd fan, I would love to see them go up for all the effort they put in.

WHAT?! Not really to do with the Harty issue but I couldn't believe what I was reading!!

 

[supaseagull]

Bates knew the implications of going into administration at the end of last season. He also knew the implications of what would happen if it wasn't sorted out by the beginning of the new season. If leeds got points back, then the Football League would have legal challenges coming from all of those other clubs who have had points deducted over the last 2-3 years.

I wonder whether if the club in question had've been someone like Bury or Wrexham whether Leeds' challenge would have got this far.

I really hope that Leeds do not get their points back...They don't deserve it and shouldn't be given special treatment.

oh...and I think Ian Hart is spot on

 

[Dandyman]

indeed. but he is not the first, nor will he be the last to run his mouth without the full facts.

Starry - would you say David Conn's article is accurate ? In particular, do you hand on heart believe Bates has nothing to do with the off-shore companies?





Leeds leave creditors clinging to wreckage

Ken Bates' dealings - including the non-payment of St John Ambulance, and a proposed penny to pound rescue plan - have angered creditors.

David Conn May 29, 2007 11:59 PM

Amid the wreckage of Leeds United, in the appalling, familiar list of those left unpaid by another bust football club, sits an organisation which does not even charge for its services, just asks clubs to contribute towards expenses. Nevertheless, there it is again, in the £35m mountain of debts which Ken Bates's Leeds is not paying: St John Ambulance, owed £165.

At what is expected to be an angry creditors' meeting on Friday, the administrator, Richard Fleming of accountants KPMG, is proposing that Leeds be sold to a new company headed by Bates, in return for a payment of only 1p for every pound of debt. That proposal is backed by the three anonymously-owned, offshore companies who claim collectively to be owed £17.78m. If it is passed, St John Ambulance will be given £1.65 and will still be expected to turn up again next season to tend to the Elland Road injured.

Other organisations which will suffer the same fate, contained in a tightly-typed, 25-page list of creditors produced by the administrators, include suppliers of all the basics to a football club: local schools, hospitals and universities, the gas, electricity and water utilities, and Leeds City Council's leisure department, which is owed £124,121.

The speed with which the deal to sell the club was done, and questions about the identity and motives of the offshore companies, have infuriated many people in Leeds, a city now deeply embarrassed by the car-crash plight of its only professional football club. Bates, despite being a belligerent and unabashed chairman, is not even officially a shareholder; Leeds United is owned by the Forward Sports Fund, registered at a Cayman Islands PO box, with a Swiss-based company Chateau Fiduciaire named as its director. Bates's solicitor, Mark Taylor, has described Bates as Forward's "UK representative", the closest Bates comes to ownership of the club.

On May 4, the same day that Leeds were placed in administration, Fleming announced the deal to sell the club for 1p in the £1 to a new company, of which Bates and Taylor are directors, again owned by the Forward Sport Fund. It will have to pay what are known as "football creditors" - players and other clubs owed money - in full if the club is to be allowed to compete in League One next season, but all other debts will be all but wiped out.

Forward, according to club records cited in the administrators' report, paid £4.5m to take over Leeds in January 2005 from the previous owners, a group of local businessmen chaired by the insolvency accountant, Gerald Krasner. Forward now claims it is owed £2.419m, loaned in the failed attempt to keep the ailing club in business.

One of the two other offshore companies, Krato Trust, registered at a PO box in Charlestown, Nevis in the West Indies, claims to be owed £2.5m, having lent the club £2.25m between December 2005 and June 2006. Astor Investment Holdings, registered at a PO box in the British Virgin Islands, with an office in another tax haven, Guernsey, claims to be owed £12,839,309, having loaned the club £11,285,269 between August 2005 and October last year.

Both Krato and Astor Investment have told the administrator they have no connection to Bates, Forward Sports Fund or any other director of Leeds. Fleming told me his firm had made "fairly extensive inquiries" to confirm there was no legal connection between them and said, in fact, the owners of Astor were unknown.

Krato and Astor have stated that they have no connection with Forward or Bates. Nevertheless they have agreed to the proposal to sell the club to Forward for 1p in the pound, even agreeing to reduce the amount they will receive. Astor has agreed to write off half its claim if creditors approve the sale, while Krato has agreed to accept nothing at all.

Asked why the two anonymously-owned offshore entities should agree so dramatically to write off millions of pounds put into Leeds, in return for a sale to a new company in which they state they have no interest, Fleming said: "At the time we agreed it, there were no other offers. Maybe they had football in their hearts and wanted the club to survive."

The proposals need 75% of creditors to agree, so the offshore companies can block any alternative because their debts amount to 45% of the total. However, the transfer of the club is not expected to proceed without a storm. Several creditors have said they intend to challenge the administrator, demanding to know who is behind Astor and Krato to see proof they are not connected to Bates, and ask for solid evidence of the money the offshore trusts claim to have put in. Krasner, the former chairman, has offered to represent creditors free of charge to challenge the sale to Forward for what he describes as: "A derisory offer to creditors, people who have supported Leeds through thick and thin."

After a season in which Leeds were relegated, often watched by a depressed, half-full Elland Road where adult ticket prices averaged about £35, there is not a great popular appetite for Bates retaining control. Rick Duniec, chair of the Leeds United Supporters Trust, says:"Our main concern is to see our club restored to health, and it seems quite a widespread opinion that people want a change to more local ownership."

Leeds, a city which has been thriving economically, still has no major venue capable of hosting concerts and Elland Road has long seemed an obvious site for development, especially if it had a thriving modern football club at its heart. United's debt-laden collapse since the team reached the 2001 Champions League semi-final is infamous enough, but the detail of the last three years, chronicled in the administrator's report, still makes shocking reading.

Krasner and his consortium took over in March 2004, with £95.5m of the debts taken on by the former chairman, Peter Ridsdale, and his board written off. Krasner's consortium sold Paul Robinson, Alan Smith, James Milner, Mark Viduka, Elland Road, the Thorpe Arch training ground and, for £5m, an option to develop Elland Road, but still could not stem the club's losses.

In January 2005, with the Inland Revenue pressing for payment of £1.2m, the consortium sold the club to the Forward Sports Fund. Bates became the chairman and the offshore companies put their millions in, yet despite reaching the play-off final in 2006, selling Rob Hulse and Matthew Kilgallon, and receiving £4m compensation from Chelsea for two youth players, Tom Taiwo and Michael Woods, Leeds continued to haemorrhage money. The administrator's report does not make clear why that happened. Creditors piled up and last month HM Revenue and Customs issued a winding-up petition. Leeds owe almost £7m in unpaid tax and VAT.

It will be a surprise if the taxman accepts 1p in the pound, and with ordinary creditors likely to challenge too, the club's destiny appears to lie with the decision on Friday of two opaque funds, registered in the West Indies and BVI.

St John Ambulance, though, is unlikely to involve itself in any rows. The charity has tended not to make a fuss and avoided public statements, as it has been left unpaid, time and again, by football in its boom time.

Money owed

£631,595

Wages still owed to several former players including Michael Ricketts, Paul Butler, Eirik Bakke, Steve Stone and Jermaine Wright

£216,667

Money still owed to Danny Mills, who last played a competitive match for Leeds in May 2003

£3,839

Owed to New Burley Window Cleaners

£46,604

Owed to Leeds Metropolitan University

£2,900

Owed to Boo's Disco of Bramhope in Leeds for the hiring of mobile discos

£8,997

Owed to the West Yorkshire Ambulance Service

 

[Publius Ovidius]

Blimey....my press pass on saturday was in Ian's name.

You could have told me that they were on the warpath harty!!!!!

 

[Yorkie]

Thanks Dandyman.
The more that I read that, the more it stinks.

 

[Harty]

Blimey....my press pass on saturday was in Ian's name.

You could have told me that they were on ttrawling through my ehe warpath harty!!!!!

Didn't know Dave till about 3hrs ago


Has anyone got the August 95 edition of Gulls Eye as I'm pictured with Ken in 'happier times', in fact minutes after he told me that there wouldn't be an Albion without Greg Stanley?

Dave your an intelligent man trawling through my recent e-mails do you know what the exact difference is between a C*** and a C***head?

 

[dougdeep]

What makes Leeds so different?

They're dirty northern monkeys.

 

[Publius Ovidius]

Didn't know Dave till about 3hrs ago


Has anyone got the August 95 edition of Gulls Eye as I'm pictured with Ken in 'happier times', in fact minutes after he told me that there wouldn't be an Albion without Greg Stanley?

Dave your an intelligent man trawling through my recent e-mails do you know what the exact difference is between a C*** and a C***head?

a c**t is the anglo saxon name for a part of a lady's front bottom.

a C**thead is and anglo saxon name for a person who buys a football club for £56 and sells it for £20million odd and lived in mellor and whose name is an anagram of rachre

 

[Cheshire Cat]

Regarless of why the 15 points were deducted, or the rights and wrongs of the case, I still find it very funny that a HUGE GI-NORMOUS club like Leeds United (the Champions of Europe elect, the natural rivals of Manchester United the biggest club in the world (yuk) (although they haven't actually played them for while now) winners of many riots in the past, and home to the most loyal England manager of all time in Don Revie (before he legged it to Saudi Arabia), have to go to the law and drag themselves through the courts, embarassing themselves and lossing all of their dignity, all to try and get themselves out of Division 3 (REPEAT DIVISION THREE) of the English league (whatever it is actually called these days), because they find themselves unable to play sufficiently good football to get promoted properly.

 

[clapham_gull]

It's a very good article I've read a number of times just to try and understand what's going on up there.

The problem I've got is the inaccuries that again are being posted regarding the case.

The post above is a good example. Leeds obviously are good enough to get out the league, if you gave them the 15pts back they'd be in second place.

Also - they havent just started complaining about it .- they started the action the minutes the points were dedicted

 

[Mrs Coach]

Threatening to burn your house down..... thats disgusting ..... I hope the police are taking it seriously Ian....

 

[Harty]

Threatening to burn your house down..... thats disgusting ..... I hope the police are taking it seriously Ian....

Mrs Hart is, she's moved out half way through Corrie with no forwarding address

Thing is Paula its an opinion piece, written at the crack of dawn against a hectic schedule, if I've made a mistake I will have to take what's coming to me, but ultimatley I stand by the overiding sentiments expressed.

 

[Easy 10]

I reckon Harty should meet up with Starry some time.
They'd probably get on like a house on fire.

 

[The Oldman]

I cannot believe how nasty those Leeds folk are. Their stewards were so nice to us on Saturday. We are right behind you anyway Harty, it's just that Seaford is a long way from worthing!

 

[wigman]

Having read the article last Thursday when i bought the Herald and now reading it again to remind myself,i cannot see what all the fuss is about.It is just Harty as a man passionate about sport expressing an opinion which himself and others including myself believe true.
To have emails stating that someone wants to burn your house down is taking matters too far!
ps; Harty can use give us any inside information what is going to be in your column this week.