I find it really hard to believe that Leeds United FC can’t pay its wages, and hasn’t really been a viable business since 2001 or thereabouts, while Leeds RLFC remains a powerhouse club and one of the richest in Rugby League.
Dave Hadfield called the chapter on Leeds in Up and Over “League in its City”, but this is the UK and we’re talking about football. Football! Even in Yorkshire it’s just bigger than League. There’s something astonishing about the long-term career of mismanagement successive owners have pursued.
You could say something similar about the baffling proposition it’s impossible to sell rugby league tickets in Bradford at a profit.
LUFC provides the best example of why football club’s books badly need to be thrown open to scrutiny. A club that gets an average attendance of 25’000+ and has sold most of its best and most highly paid players to Norwich City over the past few years should not be in its current crisis. When Bates was chairman he was a convenient excuse, but even since his departure things have gone downhill. Maybe they’re just the most unfortunate example of the madness of current plutocratic football.
I think I would temper your analysis of LRLFC and LUFC by pointing out that the RL club has made much greater efforts to attract and maintain support within the city than LUFC, and that you see a lot more Rhinos shirts in Leeds than LUFC. They have been helped by unprecedented recent success, but they do have more local competition than LUFC- someone from Castleford is likely to support LUFC but certainly not Leeds Rhinos! LUFC also still have solid support from non-RL supporting areas of North Yorkshire and further afield.
The original implosion of LUFC was really, really bad. There were problems created that lingered for years and years – esp. around the training ground and the match day ground.
Throw in that around the same time, we saw the rise of the oligarch era and you have a recipe for a football club with dreams of being in the top division and no real way to get there (or stay there.) You could take over LUFC and turn it around, but along the way you’d have to admit that for the medium term, the aim was to become a solid Championship club. And I don’t think any of the owners prior to Bates had the thick skin to do that. And you can’t help but suspect that Bates used the club as part of some complicated money movement scheme, likely to do with tax minimisation…
As for the Bulls, again we see lingering problems around debts and ownership of property and revenue. But you also can’t help but wonder if they tapped the fans too often to try and survive over recent years. Just not enough left…
I think what continues to annoy Leeds fans is that they felt they’d taken the medicine twice, both in 2003/04 in the post-Ridsdale years, and 2006/07 with further relegation and administration under Bates. Given that the club’s expenditure on players since then has been very moderate, and crowds have held up well (with high ticket prices), to be in the situation they’re in at the moment seems almost ridiculous. I think the Leeds fans are realistic enough not to expect to challenge for the Champions League, but the real question is why it should be impossible for them (or the Sheffield clubs) to aspire to be doing as well as Stoke, Norwich, West Ham or West Brom are in the PL. Without access to details of the financial regime at the club, that will be a difficult question to answer.
The Bates thing was just ridiculously obviously crooked, like everything that involves him. O hai mystery creditor who will only accept a deal that leaves him as chairman even if they lose more money.
as well as Stoke, Norwich, West Ham or West Brom are in the PL
Well yes. It’s ridiculous that Stoke are established in the PL and Leeds..aren’t. I mean it’s nice for Jamie Kenny and all, but really.
Oy. http://twohundredpercent.net/?p=25609
As I recall, it wasn’t until 2007 that the last of the Risdale era bloodsucking ended. Throw in years of Ken Bates and it seems all too predictable that they can’t get it together…
It does seem crazy that none of the 3 (Sheff W, Sheff U and Leeds) seem to be able to do the business, given the histories, but to be honest, the first question is why they can’t even match Hull?
I don’t know Hull’s setup/recent history that well so it’s hard to comment, but the obvious failings of the Yorkshire Superclubs – ™ are:
– Lack of financial resources from the owners
– Crap youth development, low investment in youth
– No development of footballing philosophy (c.f. Norwich, WBA over the years)
– Inability to find a manager who can bring them to promotion and stick with them.
– Once you’re low on the pole, hard to attract good players.
Part of the problem is that being in the Championship is just hard. It’s a long tough season and you have to find a way to be better, consistently. Which is why either big funds (note how many of the promotion/playoff teams are parachute payment teams) or a philosophy are needed, to make you resilient to injuries/fatigue in a tough season.
Stopping a moment to look at the table, I think the promotion/playoff teams are all either parachute clubs or someone has put some big cash down – Leicester? Nugent? yikes…
Leeds have had a good youth system. Over the past 10 years or so they have sold Milner, Lennon, Delph and Howson, brought through Byram and Lees, and acquired players such as Beckford, Johnson and Snodgrass that have all gone to bigger clubs. Sheff Utd produced the two Kyles who now feature regularly at Spurs.
Igor – fair point – “crap youth system” was an exaggeration.
The key is, it’s not good enough to make up for the general lack of cash…
Which is depressing, but the size of it.
Quite agreed with that. One of the problems such clubs have is that they need to sell and lack the money to entice young players to sign new contracts, so end up selling players at bargain prices. If they’re lucky, the big clubs farm them back on loan, which only helps as a short-term expedient.
I did a back of the envelope calculation – if the talk about Leeds’ weekly losses are right, you’d have to get a full house at Elland Road every game AND jack prices up by roughly £25 (on top of where they are already!) to balance things out. TV / Sponsorship money is just so far beyond what even dedicated supporters can provide it seems.
This is kind of a gloomy thread, but you have to say that football reflects life here. The growing inequality damages mobility. Money brings a lot of power and lack of it puts you in a position of weakness in all sorts of ways.
My own “team of birth” – Doncaster Rovers – seem to have spent the last few years exploring every innovative/crackpot business model to try and make a leap forward – but we keep slipping back to the natural level implied by the cash reserves… struggling/treading water just above the relegation places…
First link is borked btw, feel free to delete this comment…
Cellino now approved – for good or ill…
It should be said, his years as President of Cagliari make him seem like a typical owner – no huge riches to the rescue of Leeds, but competent ownership with a dash of Italian style suspicious activity around the construction of the new stadium…
(Forgive me if that sounds stereotypical, but I was tangentially involved in a corporate SNAFU around building safety permits in Italy, so the story around the new stadium seems all too typical.)
And I guess what I’m saying is – this might actually be an improvement on Ken Bates.
I wouldn’t get too disappointed with Donny Metatone. It’s not that long since I stood on the McCain Stadium terraces watching Scarborough beat them comfortably in the Conference. Considering Donny are in the second-tier now and Scarborough are in the Northern Premier second-tier and having to play home games at Bridlington, you got the better deal!
I agree that Cellino is likely to be a better chairman than Bates (damning with faint praise?), but like many of the other foreign owners, I’m sceptical as to why he would want to take the club over. It would take a vast investment to turn the club round in the short-term.
Igor – I’m not really disappointed. I remember standing on the McCain stadium terraces for a Doncaster win in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy in extra time. So there are no complaints – indeed I don’t think it would ever be sustainable for Doncaster to move higher up, there isn’t the support, it’s just not a big enough conurbation.
Being pessimistic, Cellino wants to use Leeds as some kind of shield in some strange Italian tax hedging operation – shades of Ken Bates. Being optimistic, he sees that one day Leeds will be worth something, the fundamentals of supporter numbers are strong as noted by Daniel Taylor:
http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/apr/05/leeds-united-massimo-cellini-takeover
Dick was the go-to man for the players back then, popular enough that Lucas Radebe wrote an obituary when he died last year, and he ended up recommending Bowyer tried the halibut steak…Halfway through the meal, he noticed the player looking at his plate suspiciously. The chairman, Peter Ridsdale, was at the same table. “What’s the food like, Lee?” he asked. “Umm, not bad,” Bowyer replied, without sounding like he really meant it. A few mouthfuls later, he looked back up. “Dick,” he said, “this steak’s a bit fishy, isn’t it?”
It could be LUFC’s new motto.
It does annoy me when people in the media persist in describing the city of Leeds as ‘vibrant’. Compared to where, a village in rural Ireland?
If the stories about wages are correct then maybe Cellino has a point. We have been bemoaning the apparent lack of options for clubs without access to money, but maybe the fact that Burnley are in second place and ten points above QPR shows that there are possibilities for the more frugal, or simply sensible, teams.
There’s an impossible to quantify but real impact on player from off-the-field insanity. And Leeds have had it in spadefuls for year after year.