Are you honestly saying it's impossible for us to get promoted and not sell our soul? Even Swansea and bloody Hull managed to do it without prostituting themselves. Modern football is rotten, and good men need to stand up and point out when "moving with the times" is actually just a passive acceptance of our values being eroded. If these scum latch themselves onto Leeds, we'll be the frontline in the fight against the commercialization of the PEOPLE'S game. I'll be in the trenches.
Spurs, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal, Man U, Man City... nope, not prostituted themselves to the extent of Red Bull franchises.
So degree's of it are okay? In an ideal world it would not be this way but Sky and modern times have changed it all. Ideally a large investor would take us over and bring us some glory back but this is not an ideal world. Under GFH we are going to fair no better on the field than when we were under Bates control. Would I prefer several years of GFH or Red Bull - GFH if the plan was to make us stable, invest in a youth programme and sell us on to someone who cared but they are money men, investors for the Arab world who's customers just want to see a profit on their money, no different to anyone else. I was dubious about GFH from the very start and I will be until the end, they do not care about the club, they are just more savvy than Bates. They pretend to listen to fans reducing ticket prices yet keep Bates on as some president and Harvey. If they could have charged last seasons prices and filled the ground or at least hit 30k fans they would have done so, the reduced prices are nothing to do with helping the fans spread their money further, it was a necessity that any half clued business man could have seen.
What if: Red Bull deal is off. So we still have no money to spend on the squad improvements, we wont see loan deals for Henry or Cahill to push us on in January. We should still achieve Promotion and success with Noel Hunt & no wingers (not). We don't have to worry about having one Shirt from Adidas with the same Sponsor every year, no now we can look forward to Macron with a new unheard of company on the shirt every year. PS. The stadium will still be called Elland Road & yes you guessed it we still will not own it. Great news for some....
Also.... You can not change the team name in England (so it was never going to happen). Its worth noting that in our terrace songs we are normally just Leeds (not Leeds United). MOT (We love you Leeds, Leeds, Leeds) WACCOE (No mention) We Are Leeds! I have no fear that even if Redbull could have re-brand Leeds United, that we would still not be signing loud on the terraces, we know that you can not silence Leeds fans. We are better than that, I have followed this team through some right ........ why would I walk away because a drinks company wants to spend money. They want the global presence & brand, I want to support my local team and I see no reason both can not work together. Years of crap from Bates has made us too scared of change & new people. Its to be expected, so lets see what happens.
Not really, but they're better than all of it. Since we already whore out our shirt for sponsorship, I am more willing to concede who goes there than our stadium's name, for instance. But Red Bull have proven time and again that they're in it for more than sponsorship. Should we not be aiming towards an ideal world? We are doing a little better than when you average out the Bates years which included Division Three. Off the pitch, we are doing way better. We still need further investment in order to be a modern football success story, of course. Thankfully they have the business sense to realize that you should tap into a 'brand's' existing potential, not start from scratch and use a football club purely to try sell energy drinks or Middle Eastern finance in their case. They have sidelined Bates and Harvey, who now have zero influence. And I agree that ticket price reductions are business sense, fans want their input handled wisely. Good business sense delivers that. Business and fans aren't always apart, when the business' aim is primarily to have a successful football club and not a hollow marketing machine. This all said, I'd rather a local businessman or fan consortium owned us than GFH. Why would we say that? All the proof states that there are potential investors out there, we just have to reach them. You're making this an 'A or B' choice, which is really isn't. There's plenty of C, D, E and probably F. You can't change the name of an existing club, but you can "re-found" a club like Bates did with us, and the FL would probably allocate the 'vacancy' to the new RB Leeds. And come off it with the terrace songs. MOT: "here we go with Leeds United". Forever and ever: "we're Leeds United, we rule supreme". Play all the way with Leeds United. Leeds United calypso. United... Leeds! We're Leeds United, we'll never be defeated (except by Red Bull's profiteering apologists). You can silence Leeds fans, Bates went some way towards doing it. Confiscate any banners which are 'offensive', ban troublesome fan representatives, monopolize club media output, have stewards intervene and turn fans against each other. Easy. RB did it at Salzburg, they'd do it at Leeds. It's not years of Bates which makes Leeds fans like me want us to keep our identity. It's years of Charles, Bremner, Strachan and Radebe, all of which would be officially forgotten/disappeared by Red Bull if they were able to take us over.
That's not the argument, because that's not an option. If Red Bull get involved, they'll want the whole club and they will destroy it. They are not interested in sponsorship, they are only interested in the golden share. And that is such a pathetic acceptance of "modern times" instead of standing up for history, heritage and tradition. These things matter.
The tone of this thread seems to suggest GFH will allow to do all the bad stuff RB has done in other places. The naysayers seem to belkieve that RB has only one way of getting involved. I have read and understand they have done things a certain way in other places but that does not mean that is the only way on a go-forward basis. I think it is good that we have been made aware of how they have structured their other deals - Caveat Emptor.
Based on every previous action of theirs which is the only reliable basis for this discussion, Marko's assertion is as good as fact.
Red Bull change everything about teams when they own them. What is being discussed is shirt sponsorship, and unless that situation changes I think a lot of people are overreacting.
I agree with Simon, I don't understand this reaction to shirt sponsorship and from everything I have seen there seems no intention to sell the club to RB. In fact, there is nothing that says anything even about a stadium renaming, that has been created by fans as a discussion to see whether we would be understanding if that happened. Personally I think Marko and Exo are just scaremongering and getting themselves into a panic over something that at this stage at least is very unlikely
Folks, as an older member here I think it's time for sensible reflection and perspective. We can hardly call on history and tradition when there are still people around who remember pre-Revie days, indeed I am one. Prior to that glorious period we had very little by the way of history, a period where one or two players carried us (Charles and Nightingale maybe) but no history of winning things or proud traditions indeed we were kicked out of the football league for financial irregularities as the old Leeds City team. United in a teams name suggests that more than one team were amalgamated to form a new team. We need money to grow again back to where we were if that means some form of re-branding then so be it, as said earlier no Geordie refers the Sports Direct Stadium as anything other than St James Park. In short enjoy the memories of a glorious past but don't let stupid intransigence ruin a new glorious future.
With all respect, I don't see the link between when we had little/no club identity pre-Revie and today when we still have his legacy, and all that went beyond it. Football tribalized in the 1960s and 70s, which suddenly gave clubs a new sense of culture. It went from black and white to coloured, so to speak. I wouldn't expect any club to define their current outlook by how they played in the early days of the game, except one-hit wonders like Preston and Huddersfield. But even if we were starting from a blank slate and there had been no football team in Leeds until today, I'd rather other teams and their fans dread coming to the unique Elland Road or some other characteristic stadium than some worry-free, risible, commercially-prioritizing Red Bull Arena. Likewise, I'd rather they didn't have the opportunity to gloat and mock that we were a plastic club, which we would be. And that we had plastic fans and Man U-inclined idiots sympathizing with our plight, which we would. In no other country except wussy England would we see this dejected apathy towards a club's heart being ripped out and eaten like some Indiana Jones scene. It makes me sad. That's because it hasn't had a sponsored name since 9th October. It was a failed experiment. But if they'd been subjected to it for long enough, and Sports Direct had totally renamed the stadium I have no doubt that ten years on, 70%+ of them would have called it "the SD" or something similar.
Thing is, mes amis, they never just sponsor - their strategy has always, always been to buy teams out. Take a look at the food and drinks episode of Secrets of the Superbrands (it's on YouTube). Their Managing Director's own words will tell you they have no intention of ever just sponsoring, he points out that thereby they manage to go a step further than rival brands like Coca-Cola. If I am scaremongering, it's factually based unlike the idea that they'll just sponsor our shirts and not taint our club in further ways.
I would think teams like Salzburg (Austrian div 1) and Leipzig (German div 5) would be cheap to buy compared to LUFC. Is there any evidence of Red Bull spending big in this area? If not, a sponsorship would be more credible. But who knopws, maybe its a only a matter of time befor we look like this:
