Barrel of Fun
Abort, retry, fail
Rod Liddle - The Sunday Times
I WONDER what it is about the job of a football club chairman that so entices criminals, gangsters, self-publicists, con men, megalomaniacs, imbeciles, Third World despots, touts, the terminally irresponsible, slippery little monkeys on the make and in one case - Darlington - safe-crackers? Most sensible businessmen will tell you that football is a precarious business with scant chance of making much in the way of money unless you own one of the top four clubs.
The whole enterprise is dependent upon too many vagaries. And yet even for the most stricken, debt-ridden clubs, there are plenty of takers, usually from people who if they visited your house you would swiftly lock away the silver. And your youngest daughter. Why don’t these people go into safer legalised con tricks like the insurance industry? Your club, like mine, will have had its share of appalling chairmen. They sap the morale of the supporters; they lie through their teeth, pledging unlimited investment, and before you know it the ground’s been turned into a block of executive flats and your top players have left. But none of us, I reckon, has been forced to endure the sort of misery that has been the lot of Leeds United supporters in recent months.
If Leeds United 2007 Ltd are indeed allowed to take part in League One next season, every fan who turns up to Elland Road will deserve a medal for commitment. They have stuck by their club through the most atrocious chicanery and brinkmanship. A well-supported club which, in theory, should be up there in the top eight of the Premier League has been taken to the edge of extinction by a convocation of idiotic or unscrupulous chairmen and a team of auditors who I would not trust to count the pennies in my daughter’s piggy bank. And the Leeds Utd supporters have had to put up with Ken Bates as chairman not once, but twice.
I’m a simple and naive soul; I do not understand why Bates was allowed to buy the club back when he had taken it into administration and offered to pay the creditors (including the taxpayers and the local police) just one pence in the pound (initially) of the total £35m debts. Why is that allowed to happen?
Further, when KPMG shoved the club up for sale under its new name, the offer from Bates was way, way short of the amount offered by some of the rival bidders. It is reckoned that by this time Bates had upped his offer to 13p in the pound; at least one bidder was offering 30p in the pound. One of the largest creditors, though - an offshore company called Astor - said that it would waive its debts entirely only if the Bates bid was successful. This, apparently, is what swung the decision. But isn’t there a duty to the other creditors?
It takes a lot to disquiet the football authorities, to raise in them a scintilla of suspicion that something is not quite right. But with the business at Leeds, the Football League has baulked and will not hand over the mysterious “golden share” which would allow the club to trade in players during the close season. They wish to see a bit of documentation first: at last, the powers that be are demanding some form of accountability.
But the FA has allowed Leeds to meet its preseason fixtures only if the club plays in the old name of Leeds United, rather than the exciting new one of Leeds United 2007 Ltd. What the hell difference does that make? And how can it play under the old name if the old name no longer exists?
Meanwhile Bates has been stamping about in jubilation, despite the fact the club is a long way from being out of the woods. Legal challenges are likely, not least from the Inland Revenue which must consider whether the new offer of 13 pence in the pound is adequate recompense. If it decides that 13 pence is fine and dandy, I might well try the same trick the next time my self-assessment form comes through.
Bates has been talking the usual gung-ho, self-aggrandising rot. He claims that of the e-mails and letters he has received from Leeds fans, 99% were in support of him. “That’s as good as Saddam Hussein did when he was fiddling the figures,” Bates remarked. An unfortunate comparison. On message boards and on the local radio stations opposition to Bates is running at about 75%, and some would like him to meet a similar end to that of the politician to whom he compared himself.
Meanwhile, there’s a lot of anger in the direction of KPMG - a firm which was once done in America for marketing “abusive tax shelters” and was involved in another financial scandal in Brazil. A circular letter to the KPMG directors has been got up by a bunch of angry Leeds fans. It argues that the firm “never once had the true concerns of the creditors, community, sponsors or supporters of Leeds at heart”.
Difficult to disagree with that, isn’t it? The Football League, and especially its chairman, Brian Mawhinney, is not too happy with KPMG either. Leeds’ fate still hangs in the balance. For the sake of the loyal fans, you hope that things work out. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
I WONDER what it is about the job of a football club chairman that so entices criminals, gangsters, self-publicists, con men, megalomaniacs, imbeciles, Third World despots, touts, the terminally irresponsible, slippery little monkeys on the make and in one case - Darlington - safe-crackers? Most sensible businessmen will tell you that football is a precarious business with scant chance of making much in the way of money unless you own one of the top four clubs.
The whole enterprise is dependent upon too many vagaries. And yet even for the most stricken, debt-ridden clubs, there are plenty of takers, usually from people who if they visited your house you would swiftly lock away the silver. And your youngest daughter. Why don’t these people go into safer legalised con tricks like the insurance industry? Your club, like mine, will have had its share of appalling chairmen. They sap the morale of the supporters; they lie through their teeth, pledging unlimited investment, and before you know it the ground’s been turned into a block of executive flats and your top players have left. But none of us, I reckon, has been forced to endure the sort of misery that has been the lot of Leeds United supporters in recent months.
If Leeds United 2007 Ltd are indeed allowed to take part in League One next season, every fan who turns up to Elland Road will deserve a medal for commitment. They have stuck by their club through the most atrocious chicanery and brinkmanship. A well-supported club which, in theory, should be up there in the top eight of the Premier League has been taken to the edge of extinction by a convocation of idiotic or unscrupulous chairmen and a team of auditors who I would not trust to count the pennies in my daughter’s piggy bank. And the Leeds Utd supporters have had to put up with Ken Bates as chairman not once, but twice.
I’m a simple and naive soul; I do not understand why Bates was allowed to buy the club back when he had taken it into administration and offered to pay the creditors (including the taxpayers and the local police) just one pence in the pound (initially) of the total £35m debts. Why is that allowed to happen?
Further, when KPMG shoved the club up for sale under its new name, the offer from Bates was way, way short of the amount offered by some of the rival bidders. It is reckoned that by this time Bates had upped his offer to 13p in the pound; at least one bidder was offering 30p in the pound. One of the largest creditors, though - an offshore company called Astor - said that it would waive its debts entirely only if the Bates bid was successful. This, apparently, is what swung the decision. But isn’t there a duty to the other creditors?
It takes a lot to disquiet the football authorities, to raise in them a scintilla of suspicion that something is not quite right. But with the business at Leeds, the Football League has baulked and will not hand over the mysterious “golden share” which would allow the club to trade in players during the close season. They wish to see a bit of documentation first: at last, the powers that be are demanding some form of accountability.
But the FA has allowed Leeds to meet its preseason fixtures only if the club plays in the old name of Leeds United, rather than the exciting new one of Leeds United 2007 Ltd. What the hell difference does that make? And how can it play under the old name if the old name no longer exists?
Meanwhile Bates has been stamping about in jubilation, despite the fact the club is a long way from being out of the woods. Legal challenges are likely, not least from the Inland Revenue which must consider whether the new offer of 13 pence in the pound is adequate recompense. If it decides that 13 pence is fine and dandy, I might well try the same trick the next time my self-assessment form comes through.
Bates has been talking the usual gung-ho, self-aggrandising rot. He claims that of the e-mails and letters he has received from Leeds fans, 99% were in support of him. “That’s as good as Saddam Hussein did when he was fiddling the figures,” Bates remarked. An unfortunate comparison. On message boards and on the local radio stations opposition to Bates is running at about 75%, and some would like him to meet a similar end to that of the politician to whom he compared himself.
Meanwhile, there’s a lot of anger in the direction of KPMG - a firm which was once done in America for marketing “abusive tax shelters” and was involved in another financial scandal in Brazil. A circular letter to the KPMG directors has been got up by a bunch of angry Leeds fans. It argues that the firm “never once had the true concerns of the creditors, community, sponsors or supporters of Leeds at heart”.
Difficult to disagree with that, isn’t it? The Football League, and especially its chairman, Brian Mawhinney, is not too happy with KPMG either. Leeds’ fate still hangs in the balance. For the sake of the loyal fans, you hope that things work out. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
