Yes - Under previous owners Leeds over spent and the tax payer lost out as well as countless small businesses. Bates came in, steadied the ship and has you posting profits instead of government bail-outs. Like it or not, Ken Bates saved Leeds United - be thankful
TC = WUM Kenneth is not exactly guilt free in this department. He took Leeds into Administration, he offered these small businesses you mentioned only 1p in the pound before been pushed up to 8p in the pound. He also agreed to pay 30p in the pound if we are promoted into the Premiership before 2018. But when we were within touching distance when he sold Gradel, Howson and then sacked the manager. He is not daft and needs the fans to keep bankrolling the club so he hired Neil Warnock as manager, Neil has real expertise in building a team, sadly if you don't give a builder money he can not build. So we will stay in the Championship until 2018 or Bates checks out.
TC - when bates came in, our debts were down to £20m. Two years later, we entered adminstration with debts of £38m. Sound similar to Portsmouth? He then tried to hoodwink the HMRC and the CVA process, offering 1p in the pound, but the HMRC decided it would take Leeds to court. So Bates forced the administrators to sell the club with one week's notice, and stated that if he did not win the club back, he would kill it off. It then became clear that £17m of the debt was with his own business partners, who "wrote off" (yeah) their debt only if Bates won the club back. Then Bates claimed he did not own the club. Then Bates claimed he did own the club, having bought it for a quid. Since then, we have had dwindling support solely because the prices we are charged are the 5th highest in the country, wit hthe premise of "If you want Premiership football, then you pay Premiership prices". While we were in financial trouble in League 1, we had not choice but to pay these amounts in large numbers to stop our club going completely bust. But Bates claims he saved the club. Now that he has alienated a very large proportion of the fans and the hardcore support is walking away in its thousands every year, and will not return until either it is value for money or Bates and his cronies have gone, his business model is falling down around his ears. There is no profit other than player sales. There may have been a bounce in 2010/11, but the downward trajectory of the following bounce since then still shows no sign of hitting the floor. Cashflow has disappeared, money is being hameorrhaged through loss-making business ventures, and turnover is falling falling falling, with no sign of the paying customer returning. So which bit of "saving the club" does this fall into? Looks a lot more like killing off our club to me. Notice I have not mentioned once the team. The team is irrelevant - I just want my club to stay alive. But to do that, the CEO has to put in place a structure that entices people to come to the club and to spend money, not one that tells the customer "keep away, you are not wanted"
Messiah complex. "You can be grateful for what I let you have for the price you pay, and if you're not happy you can **** off"
Josh - that money has already been spent. And then some. Why do you think the club had to take out a £5m facility by selling the future season tickets income, and also had to sell £32 of stock for £3.2m with a guaranteed return of £4m? It needed money! because it had none! Why do you think the season ticket sales had a deadline of january 31? Earliest in the country! Cashflow. We then gave it up. The club has NO MONEY. The loss of 4000 average supporters per home match is a reduction in turnover of £1.7m, which wipes out the previous year's £950k profit and turns it directly to a loss of nearly the same amount. Then those people not turning up have not spent on average £5 per head in the various shops - another £500k loss in turnover. It's cloud cuckoo land to believe we are profit making. And that there is any pot for purchases. Warnock will have a budget of £10m to pay for himself and his management team, to buy players, and to pay players, and to get loanees in. And I doubt it will be topped up from selling any of the current players like Snoddy, Lees, McCormack or White (we will get compensation) because that will be needed for cashflow and for subsidising the loss-making companies. It is plain and simple, black and white to me. This is why I have no optimism for our club, until this cur has left us.
Notice I have not mentioned once the team. The team is irrelevant - I just want my club to stay alive. But to do that, the CEO has to put in place a structure that entices people to come to the club and to spend money, not one that tells the customer "keep away, you are not wanted" ............................................................................................................................................................ Is the reason you have not mentioned the team because in the last 4 seasons there is no justification for saying that Bates has not provided a squad good enough for promotion for every one of those 4 seasons?
Really!? We failed this season because the squad had nowhere near enough strength in depth, simple as. IMO we have a starting 11 good enough to make the play-offs, but we've struggled with fatigue and having to bring in players who just aren't good enough when we have rotated.
Well last 2 seasons, he hasn't, because it costs too much and cuts into his vanity project fund. The proof is in the pudding, in that we're not in the Premier League. The team hasn't been good enough, or rather the squad, because it's squad players that let us down last season, and it's the entire squad that let us down this season. It's less about the club money he's generously allowed the club to spend on it's main business, football, and more about the fact that he's done it half assedly every step of the way. He spends money on whatever he wants and whatever is left over gets put on the squad, which is why we're dead bottom of the table of turnover to wages ratio. I guarantee half the clubs in the league aren't struggling financially, yet they can afford to spend a larger percentage of their turnover? So where is all our money going? We've got more of it but can afford less on players. Long story short, our problem with bates is that we have enough money to put us at the top of the league of big players financially, why does the club (or rather bates) refuse to take that advantage and use it? Clubs go bust overspending because they are trying to compete with clubs that actually have money, like Leeds. So why are we doing the opposite, essentially lowering the bar of what other clubs have to spend to compete with us?
Is that Bates' fault? Didn't he sanction the signings/loans of Brown, Lonergen, Forsell, Varynen, Pugh, Rogers, Webber, Delph, Townsend, Keogh,McCarthy, Robinson and Smith? I'd say that is pretty good backing for any manager!!
Loans = good backing!? What planet are you on mate? Only 2 of those players were cash signings, both for under £500k.
Bates has not provided the money to build a squad good enough for promotion for any one of the last 4 seasons. But I am more interested that we have a club that is sustainable. That's what the lesson of Ridsdale is. That's why I am talking about the club problems, not any team problems.
But they don't play for nothing do they - cash signings are never paid up front anyway - usually spread over the course of the deal. I expect Brown, Forsell, Robinson and Pugh are right up there with the league's top wage earners
I suspect you're thinking wrong. More than you, sure, but we're paying nowhere near as much as West Ham, Reading, Cardiff, Southampton etc. and certainly nowhere near as much as we're capable of doing, which is the real issue.
Those 4 clubs are gambling to get to the Premiership - West Ham are £110M in debt and have not yet paid the Sheffield United fine - Only Gold and Sullivan's porn money keeping them afloat and from reading Gold on twitter that can't go on for much longer! Southampton are being backed by the wealthy Leiber family's fortune - without that they would not be able to compete. Haven't got a scooby on how much Reading or Cardiff have spent, but Cardiff fans are blaming their current blip on the size of their squad - Think Reading have made a lot more from player sales than they have spent in the last few seasons!!
But the main complaint is we could realistically spend far more players than we currently are and still stay in the black, but it's all going towards pointless building projects and "other fees". We've been signing loads of cheap replacements for the key players we've lost when if we were truly ambitious we'd be keeping them and adding 2 or 3 more players of real quality on top of them.
We got rid of a lot of players from the wage bill at the end of last season. We will do again this season. Brown - Part of the summer explosion of activity having got rid of Johnson and Kilkenny. Not a replacement for either, had not played for a year, was completely unfit, had little pre-season tringin as picked up an injury and was thrown in to the team first game and found to be utterly useless. Cost zero. Lonergan - direct replacement for Schmeichel. Cost nothing and wages less. We also got rid of our other goalkeepers at the same time. You forgot to mention Rachubka. Neither of thes playwers were on anyone else's radar - this is why we went for them - cheap and a gamble. Forsell - not played for years, old, free to sign, cheap on wages. Offers nothing. A gamble. Varynen - an unknown in english football. A gamble. Cheap on wages, free to sign. One year deal. You forgot O'Dea - a panic loan deal on the eve of the start of the season when we did not have a left back, so we went and got a cnetre back. We actually had a left back in White, but Grayson refused to put him in. Pugh - a mid-season panic purchase because we had sold Max Gradel on the last day of the transfer window. A direct replacement? No. Eventually cost £500k - much less than we received for Gradel. Rogers - an unknown american. A gamble. Cheap on wages, and free to sign. Webber - not played in years, fully unfit, 6 month deal to replace our captain, Jonny Howson who made Bates £2m. Does he replace him? No. Cheap on wages, nothing on fee. Delph - injury prone ex-player who needed some match fitness and signed for a month on loan. Did not replace Howson, and got injured again, returned to Villa. Townsend - a kid, young and fast, but very soon lost interest and wanted to leave. Giving opportunities to little kids who can't get in their first team is not what we should be about. ER is not the place for that, The New Playpen may be - see Keogh. Keogh - a stop-gap panic loan. "My priority is not strikers" says Grayson as we lose Somma to injury, Becchio to injury, and Paynter is as much use as an unuseful thing (ie another gamble). He starts well, but can't score. Plenty of opportunities, but unable to hack it. Goes back to his host club, picked up by Millwall and scores for fun at a club where there is no expectation and no pressure. McCarthy - a stop-gap GK while Lonergan is injured and after Rachubka has bled us dry. Good use of the emnergency loan system, but really there was zero choice. Very good goalkeeper, should have bought him. Robinson - really don't understand why we have got him. We had no chance of doing anything this season after NW came in - just seemed like a complete waste of money to me. This signing was Bates pretending to Warnock that he will back him. Can't exactly turn down his first request can he? Smith - another kid, as soon as Townsend wanted to go, he jacked in aswell. Mummy's boy, back home. ER is not the place for little kids. Practically every one of the signings was required to replace someone we had previously lost off the wage bill. We spent nothing on players, having received good money for Schmeichel, Gradel and Howson. Every player that came in, with the possible exception of Pugh, would have been on much less money than the players we got rid of. That is not building a team to get promoted. That is guaranteeing you don't get promoted unless you somehow get lucky by having all of your gambles miraculously come off.
But the point is that Grayson thought the players I mentioned were players of real quality and Bates let him sign them - Its not his fault that Forsell, Varynen, Townsend and Delph were flops.
You could also say that he was forced to sign them because key players were let go and he wasn't given the money to sign his 1st/2nd choices. Townsend and Delph were both brought in to try to replace Gradel and Howson who, if Bates had done his job properly, wouldn't have needed replacing.
How much did Gradel and Howson cost and what were their wages - I bet it cost a lot more to replace them!
