Or even renewing their ST? Just a membership and away games for me. Unless we have a home game that properly excites me, in which case I'll get the... er... cheapest ticket possible, if you know what I mean. Just can't see why anyone would be willing to put serious money into the club's coffers next season and financially endorse the disastrous way the club's being run.
If we have a new Chairman or spend the right aount of money to mount a serious promotion challenge, yes. In other words, no.
Me & my mates (and I am sure we are not alone) have boycotted Elland Road this season. For one reason & one reason only - Bates. We are members & go to as many away games as we can to SUPPORT THE TEAM, not Bates, we wont endorse him raping our club by lining his pockets. Its time for action, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. Howson will not be the last high profile departure while that Chelsea bastard is in charge. The fans must make themselves heard & any right minded businessmen with money who are Leeds men need to stand up & be counted & buy this club back - AND SOON. MOT dont let the Bastard get you down. Make your voices heard. I'd rather be a MORON than a C*NT
Bates wants £40m I think to sell up. That's £1,000 each from 40,000 fans, the price of an ST plus a bit more. Let the fans buy him out, the club runs itself anyway, makes a profit without having to sell players. The first thing we should do once we own the club is reduce ticket prices by 30%, get 10,000 more fans in & still make a profit. Get the place buzzing again. It's time the club was returned to the fans, I'd like to be the first to pledge a grand to the BUY BATES OUT FUND.
LeedsInEssex, as much as that idea 'works on paper' it wont work in real life. The club does not 'run itself' and someone needs to take charge of it and make quality appointments in place of harvey and perhaps grayson if he does not continue improvement which has already halted. You think fans could decide on that?? Fans have disagreements about the most stupid things, most wont agree about grayson
Fan-owned clubs work either via direct democracy like you see at Lewes FC or via elections for board members like you have at Barcelona and a lot of German clubs. So there's hardly a lot of squabbling and indecision, except at election time, but that's a necessary part of fan ownership. By the way, the average fan-owned club performs better than its average divisional counterpart which is owned by a third party. Which says a lot about the team spirit and togetherness which that model can bring. I'd love Leeds to be owned by its fans and I think it would put us firmly on the path to being great once more if we genuinely had people who care about the club at the helm. But it's unworkable to get a 40m buyout from fans unless there's someone mega-rich willing to put in 39m of it! People don't just have a grand's disposable income that they could chuck at a scheme like this which would be unlikely at best to succeed. Looks like our hopes are with a businessman taking over who isn't too much of a **** and appreciates the fans' concerns.
Leeds-18, I would love to chuck 1000 quid at leeds and even more if need be and have the fans own it but 40,000 fans is too much. I know nothing of how other fan ownership clubs work but surely they do not have that many people who own it. How would outside investment work for example, would a singularly 'well off' fan just put forward a few million to buy a couple players? I know the club makes a profit and wouldn't necessarilly need outside investment but its one of the many things that I could think of which I wouldn't fully understand how it'd work. I'm not saying its a bad idea though
In Germany, there's a rule that fans must own 51% of every club, and presumably every official club member becomes a shareholder upon their purchase of a membership. I looked at a list of Bundesliga clubs and their membership figures, and they all have over 20,000 I believe; Bayern have nearly 200,000. On average, it was about the same as us with 33,000-ish. We could get as many members as Bayern if we played our cards right, and could be an absolute colossus if the fans elected the right people to the board, and we could ride the crest of the Financial Fair Play wave to success. I just don't see how it would logistically work getting this takeover to happen - who would front up the fans' takeover? How would they contact tens/hundreds of thousands of people? How would they convince them it could happen? Would people really have the cash at hand to spend? A grand is an awful lot for a scheme which could go tits up. If it does happen, brilliant, and I'd give what I could towards it. But I think an absolute millionaire would have to be involved and would have to be willing to give control to the collective rather than take it for himself in order for it to work.
I hope this isn't seen as a wind up, because it's not meant to be. When Leeds was up for sale previously, despite what Bates says, several investors came forward, what they each said was that they couldn't move on the deal as it wasn't clear what specifically was for sale. If that sounds odd, think about Abramovic's situation when he bought Chelsea and had to re-visit the deal because of bits that were held back and he's STILL finding bits not quite sold as he thought even now. Point being, ANY purchaser should be extremely cautious before getting involved.
Sorry Kissa, i cannot agree with you, that is a useful peace of anatomy on a female thats offers lots of pleasue, now how about Bates being a useless piece of **** that is wrecking the club i will go along with. BATES DEFINATELY OUT! ENOUGH IS ENOUGH
We need someone to hack into his bank accounts and get back all the money he`s fleeced from us,shaft the dirty bastard
