Tag Archives: Ken Bates

The Lesson of Leeds United: Sort Out These Tyrant Owners – by Rob Atkinson

Posted on 21/12/2013 | 23 comments
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Bates: Irrelevant

Many times over the past few years I despaired of the future of my beloved Leeds United.  It was a club dying under the not-exactly benevolent rule of one Kenneth William Bates, a man who had taken control at Elland Road almost 21 years after declaring his avowed intent to see the club banished from the Football League and sent into oblivion.  This perhaps wasn’t the best recommendation for the supposed saviour of United (we heard repeatedly later of how he had saved Leeds at least once, and possibly two or three times).

The next seven years made you wonder whether the Bates reign had started with the breaking of a mirror in the Elland Road boardroom, although what followed was not so much bad luck as bad management, bad PR, bad taste – just every shade of bad you could possibly think of.  Ken’s method of “saving” Leeds, involving as it did relegation to the club’s lowest ever league status, did not inspire confidence.  Administration ensued, with record points deductions which saw an institution of the game in this country being hounded by their fellow league clubs who snarled and slavered as they were ranged against a hapless and helpless United.  It was like watching a mortally-wounded lion being snapped at by a pack of degraded hyenas – or standing by, powerless and frustrated, as a beloved family member was beaten up by snarling thugs.  It was simply horrible.

All in all, then, Bates’ potential as saviour looked more like that of a man who was determined to compass the demise of the club – and many were the reminders of his 1984 Chelsea-owning vow:  ”I shall not rest until Leeds United are kicked out of the football league. Their fans are the scum of the earth, absolute animals and a disgrace. I will do everything in my power to make sure this happens.”  Seven years under a Ken Bates thus motivated is a hell of a long time; for much of that period, things were bleak, grim and joyless around LS11.  The peaks of success were achieved in spite of Bates, not because of him; promotion and a famous win at the home of the Champions in the FA Cup came against a background of player sales, transfer market impotence and managers hamstrung into a frustrated inability to do their jobs properly and effectively.  Ken Bates was to Leeds United what Myxomatosis had been to the rabbit population of Australia; if he’d been left unchecked, the club may well have died.  It was that serious.

Now of course, despite the odd white-bearded apparition seen slithering around in the vicinity of Elland Road, Ken Bates is gone from the club.  It’s safe to pick up a programme again (and even a bit cheaper) – without having to bear the embarrassment of reading his latest rants against the fans (morons) or his business associates, nearly all of whom were either suing him or being sued by him – but at the club’s expense.  No more Radio Bates FM, no more silly bloody notions of a Northern take on Chelsea Village.  Gone and irrelevant, unlamented and destined (we devoutly hope) to leave no long-term mark on our beloved Leeds.

The legacy of Bates now is more intangible than material.  Sure, there’s the cladding on the East Stand and a few vanity projects elsewhere in the stadium.  But the true impact is on the fans; as a body we are now suspicious of owners, investors, saviours – yes, especially saviours.  The fans know what they want, but for the current owners of Leeds United it’s a slow process winning their unqualified trust – even if their aims really are absolutely parallel to those of the frustrated and long-suffering United support.  I write this with feeling; I’ve been as guilty as the next man of occasionally expressing doubts and reservations about where we’re heading under GFH, or under whatever the Consortium apparently on the brink of another takeover will call themselves.  It’s just not easy to lose that suspicion which amounts almost to paranoia; it’s not easy to trust men who are, after all, businessmen wanting to show some return on their money.  Trust will come, but more solid proof may be needed before everything in the garden is rosy.

Double jeopardy: Allam and Tan

Double jeopardy: Allam and Tan

Still, relative to certain other clubs, things are pretty good at Leeds United.  We could be Hull, struggling against an embarrassing change of name being foisted by owner Assem Allam on unwilling supporters who want to be Hull City and not Hull Tigers (cringe).  We could be Cardiff City, already suffering in red after they’ve been Bluebirds these many years.  Of course these two clubs are in the Premier League, and that will mean a lot to their fans.  But at what price?  Would Leeds United fans accept an elevation which comes at such a premium?  Red instead of White, or being known as Leeds Red Bulls even?  What price tradition, pride, identity?  I know how I’d feel – I’d fight such scandalous iniquities to my dying breath, and whatever the feelings of certain complaisant short-term glory seekers, I’m sure there’d be many thousands fighting with me.  As things stand, we have to trust that our current and future owners do not intend to follow a Hull or a Cardiff route.  If that trust were to be breached, things could get pretty hot for those gentlemen.

At times during the Bates era, I used to wish that something official could be done about him, to have him forcibly excised from our club.  “Fit and proper?”, I’d think to myself, unable to understand how any governing body could accept this of such a transparently villainous and malicious, self-serving old curmudgeon.  I saw managers depart and I knew they’d not had a fair chance.  I used to hope that maybe the League Managers Association (LMA) would advise its members not to work for Bates, and force the issue that way.  I doubt it would ever have come to that – too many peace-at-any-price merchants in those particular corridors of power.  But that’s how desperate I felt, that’s how much I wanted rid.  It’s just a year ago since the beginning of the end of Bates.  What a very much happier year it has been.

Now, with things so much more positive around Elland Road, and with the promise of better things yet to come, I can feel some sympathy for fans – and managers – who are suffering under tyrants, much as we did.  Particularly, I feel sympathy for Malky Mackay, the manager of Cardiff City who got them at last into the Premier League and whose reward is that he probably won’t be their manager for much longer.  He’s been issued with a “resign or be sacked” ultimatum by owner Vincent Tan, a man whose football knowledge adds up to precisely zero.  Still, having ruined the Bluebirds image, he feels qualified to criticise the coaching, tactics and transfer policy of a football man, a solid professional and a man of dignity and restraint in Mackay.  This manager is a dead man walking and he must know it – but still, he’s travelled to Anfield with his team, hoping against hope that he can coax a performance out of what must be a bewildered, angry and confused group of players – at the daunting home of a formidable Liverpool side.  And then, he’ll be gone.  I fervently hope he sticks to his guns and refuses to walk, and I hope too that every penny of his contract is paid up to him.  He will emerge with massive credit for a job well done; he will not be out of work for long.

If there are any hitches with the terms of his dismissal, though, the LMA should show it does have some teeth – and withdraw their members from availability for the Cardiff manager’s position.  Maybe they should do that anyway, to show some solidarity and to demonstrate to Tan and the others like him that the cadre of football professionals will not be made to jump through hoops at the petulant whim of wealthy but clueless, spoiled and egotistical individuals who are just looking for a shiny toy to play with.  I would love to see Tan in the position of having to manage his own football affairs.  His players wouldn’t be able to perform for laughing.  And after all, why should any honest professional, player, coach or manager want to work for such a man?  Let him paddle his own canoe, and let him sink without trace.  In the long run, it would even be better for the fans that way.

English football stands today in real danger of being dragged down to the level of certain other leagues throughout the world, where petulance and tantrums rule over sober judgement and the sanctity of professionalism.  This is something that should be resisted, tooth and nail.  As Leeds United fans, we feel a rivalry with pretty much any other set of fans anywhere, and an antipathy with several groups who don’t need naming here – but decidedly, Cardiff would be among that number.  However, in this situation, I believe that solidarity and the greater interests of the game as a whole should transcend any mere club or fan rivalry.  I’d be happy to stand alongside any Cardiff fans who wanted to protest about Tan and his treatment of a manager who has delivered a lifelong wish for them.  I would be proud to stand four square with them, and chant and sing as lustily as any.  Ultimately, no club is an island, and what can happen to one could happen to any or all.  We have the thin end of an almighty big wedge here, and if something is not done soon, then we might be surprised at some of the changes that will be imposed on clubs that might appear impervious to such interference.  And, of course, more good, honest managers like Malky Mackay will be humiliated in the press, and will lose their jobs at the whim of a megalomaniac who isn’t fit to run a pub quiz.

We at Leeds United should be as conscious of all this as anybody else.  We were nearer to disaster than many would care to admit when the first rumblings of a takeover were heard halfway through 2012.  And who knows what the future yet holds for Leeds?  At the end of the day, the notorious truculence and militancy of the Leeds United support may yet be its biggest asset – especially if, as usual, the game’s various governing bodies turn out to be about as much use as a pet rock.  So we need to stand ready at all times to look out for the interests of our club, which is so close to the hearts of so many of us.  And in the meantime, we cannot afford to ignore the plight of our counterparts at other clubs.  Solidarity and the will to organise and resist are immensely powerful forces if wielded wisely – as we found in our own fight against Bates, the will of the fans being, I believe, instrumental in giving impetus and direction to the takeover.

Let’s support the Hull and Cardiff fans where and how we can.  Let’s see if we can’t apply some pressure, as an organised and cosmopolitan movement of fans, to bodies like the FA, the Football League, the Premier League, the PFA and last but not least the LMA.  Maybe then the message would be brought home to Vincent Tan and similar tyrants that the game is bigger than them – bigger by far – and that their actions if seen to undermine the foundations of that edifice, will not be tolerated.

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Exclusive: Bates in League With Mysterons for “Radio Control” of Leeds United – by Rob Atkinson

Posted on 14/12/2013 | 8 comments
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Bates: Evil plot with Mysterons to control and destroy Leeds United

The news that former Leeds owner Ken Bates is to operate a “radio station” in the vicinity of United’s Elland Road stadium took on a more sinister aspect last night when it emerged that the former Chelsea supremo has actually entered into a pact with intangible extra-terrestrial arch-fiends The Mysterons.   The evil alien race, believed to originate on Mars, have a well-documented history of exerting control over our species, and are known to issue their threats and demands by radio.  Bates’ new venture, cunningly named “Radio Yorkshire” in an impenetrably sly effort to distance it from the now-defunct “Yorkshire Radio”, would obviously be an ideally-situated base from which the disembodied masterminds could assume control of Leeds United, a necessary precursor to their ambitions of world domination.

It is understood that Bates was earmarked as a suitable terrestrial agent of the Mysterons as far back as 1984, due to his expressed antipathy towards the Yorkshire giants while he was boss at Stamford Bridge.  Bates was quoted then as saying: ”I shall not rest until Leeds United are kicked out of the football league. Their fans are the scum of the earth, absolute animals and a disgrace. I will do everything in my power to make sure this happens.”  This forthright statement caused antennae to prick up on Mars, and moves were immediately set afoot to recruit Agent Ken to the Mysteron cause.

The masterplan has had a setback recently with Bates’ infiltration of the club having been brought to an end by forces of the counter-alien organisation GFH Capital, under its reclusive Chief, the legendary Colonel White – a man thought to have a strong personal interest in the success of Leeds United.   Bates, however, is allegedly under orders to maintain his evil programme and, to this end, advanced state-of-the-art extra-terrestrial communications and hypnotic control technology has been installed above Subway opposite the South Stand. Resistance, though said to be futile, is being co-ordinated within Leeds United by another Spectrum agent, Lieutenant Green – although tragically he has been on the injured list recently and thus has been prevented from active involvement against the Mysterons.

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Scarlet (pictured, left) and Hansen (right)

Due to the obvious potential gravity of the threat posed by what lies behind Ken Bates’ new venture, speculation is now rife that Lt. Green may be replaced in the January transfer window by Captain Scarlet who, while lacking a final ball – or indeed any recognisable primary genitalia –  has the crucial advantage of being indestructible. Scarlet, famously the love-child of Alan Hansen and Cilla Black, is thought to be available on a Bosman from his current club Liverpool.

Detailed plans for the January window are still being drawn up, with the threat of Bates and the Mysterons very much in mind, by the Leeds United management team on Cloudbase (otherwise known as the East Stand Upper).  Club manager Brian McDermott has expressed a wish to add at least two new signings to his existing squad, emphasising that he is looking for quality above quantity.  “I’m very clear about what we need,” said McDermott.  “We’re looking for a mixture of youth, experience, talent, dedication and courage in the face of alien attack.”

Leeds fans will be wary of the threat on their doorstep but determined to see of Bates once and for all.  A spokesperson for LAMA (Leeds Against Martian Aggressors) said “We’ve seen off Ken before, and we can do it again.  Mysteron radio control is not something we’re worried about, quite frankly.  We all listen to Radio Leeds now, they’ve got Ben Parker and he’s much more positive than dear old Eddie Gray was.  Eddie’s pessimism and negativity used to make my ears bleed.  Leeds legend, though.”

Ken Bates is 106.

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Why Leeds United Still Needs a Bit of Bates – by Rob Atkinson

Posted on 29/11/2013 | Leave a comment
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Bates – “The Enemy Without”

In recent times just as in the Glory Days of the past, Leeds United have always been at their best when there’s a bit of adversity flying about, some mountains to climb – maybe a few unfair obstacles to overcome.  This is what is sometimes referred to as the “siege complex”. It’s what S’ralex Fergie used over the years at Man U to help them – with the valuable assistance of refs, authorities and media – to achieve honours and dominate in a way that teams of their relative mediocrity would not otherwise have managed.  The not-altogether-likeable Taggart was a past master at this – it was his greatest asset, much more effective than the tiresome “mind-games” which the gutter rags so loved to harp on about, but in which he was consistently out-manoeuvred by the likes of Wenger, Dalglish, Mourinho, Wilkinson and Benitez.

In a smaller way, and in humbler circumstances, Leeds teams over the past few years have benefited from this sort of togetherness, forged in the white heat of hatred and contempt from outside the club.  The “sod ’em, chaps – just get out there and fight” approach was never more clearly in operation than at the start of the 2007-08 season, United’s first in the third tier, when they began their battle to return from obscurity with the penalty of a 15 point deduction hampering them. We all know that they started that season on fire, despite the scratch squad assembled cheaply and at the very last minute, due to transfer restrictions imposed by the Football League.  A sort of “Dunkirk Spirit” bound those players together as they fought to recover from 15 points behind at the foot of League One, to actually top the table just before Christmas.  Overcoming such monumental calamity brought out the best in Leeds United.

So it was back in the sixties and seventies, when Leeds United swiftly became the most hated team in the land.  Possessed of some world-class players of devastating skill, capable of the most beautiful and effective football, the team nevertheless suffered from the media labeling it as “Filthy”, a tag that has never quite gone away.  A bond grew between those lads, a brotherhood nurtured by Don Revie, simply the best manager there ever was.  The Don, partly assisted by this early example of “siege complex” transformed an ailing provincial club with virtually no history by giving them, ultimately, the finest team in the world.

More recently than the Minus 15 era, we have had still further adversity to overcome, and this time it has brought out the best in the fans as well as the players and the club itself. The malign influence of Bates created a different atmosphere around Leeds United right from the start.  All of a sudden we had a despot at the head of the club, and not one of the “benign” variety – someone whose extreme personal charmlessness infected the way United were perceived outside the club.  There was a strong feeling as well that Bates was here to pursue his own agenda; certainly not one that was favourable to the future prospects of the Elland Road outfit.  In 1984, while chairman of Chelsea, Bates had responded to some freelance demolition work carried out on his Stamford Bridge scoreboard by a gang of contractors from Leeds by saying: “I shall not rest until Leeds United are kicked out of the football league. Their fans are the scum of the earth, absolute animals and a disgrace. I will do everything in my power to make sure this happens.” On the face of it, these are not the words of a man determined to restore Leeds United to former glories, and the fans twigged the subtle shades of meaning in the quote well enough to suspect that Papa Smurf meant us harm.

This led to the most concerted campaign of publicity and action by Leeds United fans in living memory.  They wanted Bates out of the club – and from a position of no representation, little power and organisation and zero support from the media (who you suspected found it quite funny that Leeds-hater Bates held the destiny of United in his gnarled hands) – they rallied round, gathered support, organised and hit the streets with protests and campaigns aimed at achieving a power shift in the Elland Road boardroom. Out of these beginnings, eventually, came the Takeover Saga – TOMA – and ultimately, reluctantly, Bates went.  By distinct contrast, Man U fans have gone so far as to form a whole other club, without having achieved anything like the same amount of success. After all, the Glazers are still there – despite FC United of Manchester, despite thousands of cockneys at the Theatre of Hollow Myths waving what looked for all the world like Norwich City scarves.  But out of adversity, dedicated Leeds fans helped achieve real change – that’s something to be proud of.

Now, even though Bates is gone from within the club, he’s still hanging around outside it, like a nasty smell that won’t entirely go away.  He has offices just over the road, and he’s busily plotting litigation after tasting the bitter fruits of defeat and being winkled out of his Presidency.  Seemingly, he can’t drag himself away from the club he stated so clearly all those years ago that he hated and wanted to see brought low.  Now we’re on our way back up again and he’s been forced out, he still won’t retire gracefully back to Monaco and die in the Mediterranean sun.  It’s a rum do.

But maybe, and here (at last) is the point of this article, we still need his loathsome presence, the occasional sight of him slithering his way around Elland Road, or even holding court to his favoured toadies in Billy’s Bar.  Maybe he represents that negative influence we seem to need around the club, to bring out the best in us and get us fighting fit and ready to rumble?  We had Brian Mawhinney, the Football League’s repulsively-oily agent of disaster in 2007, battering us with the points deduction and rallying support from the likes of fellow reptile Paul Scally.  We’ve had Chairman Bates, till he was forced out.  Both of them acted as a focus for the fighting spirit of this club, without which we tend to fall back into apathy and complacency.

Now, we have the right manager in Brian McDermott – and we look as if we’re getting to the point where the team is coming together.  We just need that extra spark, the anti-Leeds influence that we know we have to overcome, that will produce the flames of that United fighting spirit.  Maybe Bates is just what we need to provide that spark – a Bates now relegated to an impotent role, but still as repulsive and loathsome as ever.   He can serve as a reminder of what we had to put up with and what we managed, together, to overcome.  He can be the symbol of the world outside Elland Road, the world that still hates Leeds United and wants us to fail.  Given that, we can unite and fight, get behind the team, agitate for more and more improvements in the way our club is run.

That’s the way forward for Leeds.  We’re not meant to tread an easy path.  Out of adversity we’ve always wrought our greatest triumphs.  Given an enemy outside our gates to rally and unite us, we can do so again.

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Latest Bates Court Case Could Cost Leeds United Over £1m – by Rob Atkinson

Posted on 27/11/2013 | 19 comments
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Cuddly yet litigious Uncle Ken

Ken Bates is due back in his favourite arena shortly as the litigation fanatic returns to the courtroom – and this time the quarry in his sights is Leeds United AFC itself.

The latest legal wrangle concerns Bates’ abruptly-terminated role as Leeds president – a position he was entitled to as a non-negotiable condition of the sale of Leeds United to present owners GFH Capital.  Bates remained in an executive position for some months after the sale, and was then due to move into the honorary office of Club President for a three year term ending in 2016.  However, only a matter of months into this arrangement, Bates was dismissed by GFH for “gross misconduct”.

The gross misconduct cited was said to consist of agreeing a contract (worth £500,000) for private jet travel for Bates between Leeds and his home base in Monaco.  The agreement was said to have been put in place without the knowledge or consent of the new board.  Bates will argue that the contract was set up while he was still chairman and therefore had the executive power to negotiate and authorise such a deal.  It has also emerged that, although his term as President came with a £250,000 a year salary – £750,000 over the three year term – Bates had waived this remuneration.  He has, after all, frequently claimed that he “never took a penny out of the club”.

The current legal tussle started when Leeds United sought reimbursement from Bates of costs incurred partly from the private jet contract, together with other expenses in excess of £100,000 including meals and Sky TV subscriptions which the club allege were not used to the benefit of the club.  Bates has entered a defence against that action, and counter-claimed for “wrongful dismissal” in the matter of the early termination of his Presidency.  It is thought that, if Bates were to be successful in a wrongful dismissal claim, he could be entitled to part or all of the £750,000 salary package technically due for the 3 year Presidential term, a sum he had voluntarily waived.  Legal costs on top of that could push United’s bill up over one million pounds.

These revelations come at a time when Managing Director David Haigh – a prospective Tory parliamentary candidate for Northampton South and new Chairman of Leeds United Ladies – has revealed that he has injected “a seven figure sum” into Leeds United AFC, to go towards Brian McDermott’s team-strengthening plans in the January transfer window. The irony of this is plain – should Bates be successful in his courtroom strategy, the club might possibly break even over the next few months, with Haigh’s seven-figure sum probably just about offsetting the amount Leeds could have to shell out to the wily Riviera-based octogenarian.  Swings and roundabouts.

Leeds United fans will have to cross their fingers and hope that the forthcoming court case ends as many have before, with Ken having to retire to his lair and lick his wounds. Ironically, it’s understood that in those previous instances of legal defeat, it’s often been Leeds United who had to pick up the bill, as Chairman Ken was allegedly sallying forth into battle backed by club funds.  We must sit and wait, in the hope that some of those pigeons now come home to roost and that Bates is finally sent packing without having further drained the resources of the club he’s claimed to have twice “saved”.

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Old Man Bates Spotted at Elland Road Shock Horror – by Rob Atkinson

Posted on 23/11/2013 | 18 comments
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Uh-oh. Bates is back, yesterday

Oh dear. Just when you thought it was safe to go back to Elland Road, and maybe even to part with a few hard-earned shekels in the club Megastore, or in purchasing an ambitiously-priced match ticket for the visit of the Smoggies this weekend – watch out.  Bates is back, and it’s not Norman of that ilk, but the supposedly departed and definitely unlamented Kenneth William.

Now, I’ve no desire to be unnecessarily alarmist, so if that opening paragraph sounded like a revolting mixture of recycled blurb from the publicity materials of Jaws and Psycho – then I humbly apologise.  But it’s been a bit of a shock, you see – such a graphically horrible picture. It’s not what you expect or need to see, large as life and twice as hideously old, strutting about outside our sacred stadium as if – well, as if he owned the place. Gulp.

Theories abound as to the possible reasons for the return of Papa Smurf’s reptilian presence to LS11.  None of them are much good.  This is understandable; people are reacting viscerally, out of disgust and horror at such an awful apparition, they need comfort, reassurance – some reason for this ultimate unwelcome surprise, just when we all thought the old get was consigned to the dustbin of history.  It’s a bit like waking from a nightmare of truly terrifying proportions, bathed in sweat and shaking like a palsied trauma victim, relishing that initial feeling of blessed relief that the shadowy horrors were only a bad dream – and then reaching out to touch some slimy monster by your bedside, poised to sink its slavering fangs into your neck and drink your blood dry.  It’s just not nice, not nice at all.

Some of our more mischievous brethren have already been upping the ante in the nightmare stakes, breezily speculating that Papa Smurf is the eminence grise behind The Chief’s alleged consortium.  But this surely has to be the most tasteless of wind-ups. Lucas is a nice guy and Lucas loves us.  He would not – I am certain of this – have anything to do with such a recent and reprehensible piece of flotsam from the arse-end of United’s history.  Lucas would be about renewed hope and fresh starts, concepts as far away from Bates and all he stands for as the average Man U fan is from the Theatre of Hollow Myths itself.  Any coincidence of Lucas Radebe and Kenneth William Bates in the environs of Elland Road must be just that – a coincidence, if a particularly unnerving and distasteful one.

Others have suggested that rumours of Bates’ departure were greatly exaggerated, and that he never really went away at all, but lurked in some dark corner of his restructured East Stand, like a rat under the sink.  Again, this seems unlikely – his proclaimed severing of ties with the club (and vice versa) was acrimonious and was also followed as day follows night by somewhat of a renaissance at the club; players were signed for actual money, ticket prices became marginally less insane – it was a whole new, brave new world.  Still others have suggested that the being in the picture is not The Dark One himself, but some unfortunate looky-likey, doomed to tread the earth in the guise of Beelzebub, lacking only a 666 tattooed beneath his hairline.

By far the most mundane possibility – and therefore the most probable one – is that this is merely something to do with the Regional Members Club conference.  Apparently, the Beast’s consort Suzannah still has loose ties with the RMC’s – and whither she goeth, so the Dark One will be slithering along not far behind.  It is also bruited about though that Bates has offices over the Subway fast food outlet near the stadium.  All in all, it would appear that he’s not quite so completely departed as we would ideally like to think.

Maybe it’s just that not-so-cuddly Uncle Ken still has loose ends to tie up with GFH, against whom, it was said at the time he left Leeds United, he was plotting one of his forays into litigation.  Perhaps this manifestation – loathsome and unwished-for though it may be – is simply to facilitate some sort of agreement over vexed questions such as private jets and withdrawn Presidential privileges.  It is earnestly to be hoped that this is so; that the whole thing is a hell of a lot more innocent than a picture of Kenneth William Bates could possibly ever look.

The fact is as well that, courtesy of the Taxman (may his name be ever blessed), Ken can still only spend so many days a year in this Sceptred Isle, and has to pass the bulk of his time basking on a rock in the Mediterranean, like the reptile he is.  So, nasty though this has been, his presence about the place must be strictly temporary, and there are likely to be ever fewer reasons for it to be repeated, as time goes on and the stench continues to clear.

And one day, of course, he’ll be as gone as gone can be – by which time we might be back in the Promised Land of the Premier League and acting like a big club again.  And for that glorious day, near or far, we all await in pleasurable anticipation – and with an ever-increasing confidence that sooner or later it must surely dawn..

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Life, Leeds United and Universal Armageddon – by Rob Atkinson

Posted on 15/11/2013 | 12 comments

One year on from Armageddon and the GFH Takeover

It seems daft now but, one year ago come the 21st December, we were all going to be abruptly vaporised.  Or at least, we were going to wake up with mild hangovers, and fail to enjoy the rest of the day.  The Mayan Calendar, source of these distressing rumours that so preoccupied us twelve short months ago, was a little lax on detail.

If the worst had come to the worst, and it’d been Armageddon time, then just think of all that Christmas shopping gone to waste, in a time of austerity too.  And all we’d had on TV to cheer us up was Big Brother and The X-Factor.  It would have been so easy to get depressed, even though as Leeds fans we’d had the enticing possibility of Middle-eastern Knights riding in on white camels, to save us from a fate worse than the mere end of civilisation as we knew it.  GFH Capital, had we but been aware of it, were the means by which we would eventually be rid of Kenneth William Bates Esquire.  Little wonder that we were a little distracted from the possible End of Days.

It was a perilously uncertain time, therefore, from two sharply differing points of view. In the mundane real world, ancient rumours were disturbingly current that everything was about to end in a most summary fashion, and people rightly or wrongly got into quite a tizz about this. On Planet Leeds United, however, such airy-fairy considerations were as water unto wine against the appalling possibility that Uncle Ken might continue to have us clutched firmly by the unmentionables in his cold and merciless talons.  It was a real worry at that time – just a year ago – and along with that nagging background concern about the planet suddenly vanishing into the awful void of space, it caused a few nails to be bitten even among normally phlegmatic Leeds fans.  Yet consider.  Let’s, as they say, look at the big picture.  Life could seem awfully bleak – until you consider the alternative.  And really, it was and is worthwhile stopping a moment to draw breath and ponder just how unimaginably fortunate we are simply to be here at all.   So – bear with me here – let’s wax philosophical a while – and see if that affects our world view, or even our appreciation of the New Order that eventually did take over, after all that stress and worry, at Elland Road.

Leave aside for the moment then the incredible miracle of having a habitable planet to live on – which as far as we know exists nowhere else in the whole of creation (as I write, and subject to any revelations NASA may be about to make from their current Mars Rover, or about the increasing number of newly-discovered but vastly distant exoplanets).  It’s long odds against us even having a suitable rock to live on – but given that we do, that’s hardly even the start of the battle.

The thing is, even given our temperate and nurturing planet Earth, it’s still vanishingly improbable that you should be alive today and able to read this.  Anyone who knows enough about the birds and the bees will be aware of the myriad possible ways genes can combine to create a living organism, from the simplest virus or amoeba right up to the most complex and beautiful form of life we know, i.e. Ross McCormack.  And if that earliest amoeba hadn’t, in the face of awesome odds, somehow come into being on a hot, wet rock somewhere, then ultimately – no Rossco.

Each of us, then, has to be thankful for his or her own unique existence; in the first place that their parents met when they did, and that they then followed a course of actions leading up to just the right place, time, and romantic ambience for our life’s journey to begin.  This is how we all came about, after all – even Mr Bates – and any departure from that chain of events would have seen us never existing.

Further, behind those parents, on both sides and stretching back generations without number, the same miraculous combination of fortuitous circumstances had to occur, and it had to keep on occurring.  Any stumble off that chance-studded path of destiny, at any time over thousands, millions of years, and we just wouldn’t be around, any of us.  No you, no me, no David Haigh, no Salah Nooruddin.  It’s that serious, this business of genetic chance.

So this is the massive lottery we have all won – in fact if you calculated the odds of a lottery win next Saturday, with one to follow it the Wednesday after, going right up to, say, Easter of the year 2084 and maybe a pools win and a tax rebate each week after that till Leeds United buy back Thorp Arch – you’d still be way, way short of the odds you’ve had to beat, just to be alive right now.  It’s true.

And not only are you here, you lucky sod – you’re a human being instead of, say, a fruit fly (I exclude our Norfolk-based readers from this statement).  What are the odds against that?  Have you any idea of the factor by which insects out-number humans?  You could so easily have been a wasp, or even Ken the Anti-Christ himself.  It’s difficult to say which is the less desirable.

What’s more, not only are you a human being, you also live in a time of relative peace and prosperity and one, moreover, in which Leeds have been Champions three times in living memory, and remain the Last Real Champions.  How many of the hundred billion people who have ever existed wouldn’t give their eye-teeth to swap places with us, with our mains water and services, our electric light and labour-saving devices, our Billy’s Bar and our information super-highway?  Or, alternatively, how many Newcastle fans, who would have to be in their mid-nineties now to remember a Title-winning Toon Army, would opt instead to be Leeds, with all our glorious memories?

We might, instead of our fortunate and cossetted existences, have emerged in the 12th century, digging privies for the feudal Lord, or for a brief and consumptive existence in the typhoid slums of 19th century London.  Or we could have been born at a time when Leeds United were a mere appendix to a footnote in football history, meriting hardly a passing mention anywhere the game was discussed. Are you cheering up yet?

On the whole, we don’t have it so bad, and as we’ve seen, there is good cause for all of us to be extremely grateful we’re here at all.  And that makes even Big Brother seem a little easier to live with, though naturally we’d draw the line at the former Chelsea owner Papa Smurf still being in charge down Beeston way.  A little philosophical rumination along these lines might have been therapeutic for traumatised Leeds fans a year back, unsure as we were whether to be more worried about TOMA or the End of the World.

And just think – if those ancient predictions had been right and we’d all been plunged into oblivion two shopping days short of last Christmas, well then – at least we’d have been spared the January sales and the heart-wrenching loss of Luciano Becchio.  Every cloud…..

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6 months on from Colin but his corrosive legacy lingers long at Leeds United

Posted on 30/09/2013 | 13 comments

A scathing post-mortem on Colin’s reign at Leeds United. This blogger lays the blame for our current, less than vibrant state squarely at the feet of Messrs. Warnock and Bates. A year after this article first appeared, I think it’s still obvious the author had a point…

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Bumper Crowd for Leeds’ Opener Shows Fans are On Board

Posted on 31/07/2013 | Leave a comment
We Are Leeds

We Are Leeds

It’s been a topsy-turvy summer for Leeds United and its long-suffering fans, following hard on the heels of a grievously disappointing Championship campaign in 2012/13.  The close season has produced rays of hope aplenty though, shining a beam of optimism through the murky sullenness that has hung over the support these last few years.  Chairman Bates had held our famous old club in his talons, doing seemingly as he pleased and dismissing all attempts to make him see sense and make Leeds United competitive again.  Now Bates has finally gone and all his acolytes with him; his mouthpiece in-house radio station has gone too, the new owners are finally meeting productively with fans’ groups – we’ve even spent a few bob in the transfer market.

Not all is sweetness and light, however.  Let’s be honest, it wouldn’t be Leeds United without a few under-currents about the place.  It would appear that money is still too tight to mention, despite recurrent rumours of major investment from the likes of Red Bull, or the ever-present spectre of a loaded Arab prince about to step in and buy a controlling stake.  These dreams it appears are just that – and meanwhile we have hard financial realities to face. Unless we can unload some of Colin’s deadwood, it’s difficult to see where manager Brian McDermott’s “priority signings” are going to come from.  Normally a summer of transfer impasse will have Leeds fans in a froth of negativity, but it’s slightly different this time around, simply because that dreadful weight of Bates’ brooding presence has been lifted from our shoulders.  The place feels cleaner somehow, some of the pride has returned.  It feels as though we have our Leeds United back again.

These are good foundations to build upon, and expectations appear to have been modified accordingly.  Ever since we have returned to the Championship, each season we’ve set out with promotion to the Premier League as the be-all and end-all.  Now we have David Haigh saying that promotion is a realistic objective “within two years” – and yet some are actually wondering if this isn’t putting too much pressure on Boss Brian.  That’s quite a change from the pressure heaped upon Simon Grayson’s narrow shoulders, and even the gnarled and battle-hardened Neil Warnock found the heat in the Elland Road kitchen too hard to stand.

Given the new-era atmosphere breathing fresh air into LS11, it’s arguable that a two year timetable is quite acceptable, particularly as the owners haven’t yet been able to fund transfer recruitment on the scale of a QPR, for instance.  But we should remember also that some of the clubs who bought big this time last year suffered and struggled all season long. Blackburn bought Jordan Rhodes from ‘Uddersfield for a cool £8m, and almost went down. Wolves, with a Premier League parachute payment to fund additions, did go down. Loadsamoney is no guarantee of Championship success; the trick seems rather to be a united and happy squad under an inspirational manager.  Those ingredients may just be to hand; that’s what Brian and the lads will have to demonstrate over the coming months.

The sudden optimism and the positive feelings about the club seem real enough though. Our new owners have certainly made their mark, phrases like “engaging with the fans” have been backed up by ticket price initiatives and a more generally positive (and less obviously exploitative) approach to marketing.  If proof of this healthier club/fan relationship is needed, look out for the attendance at Elland Road on Saturday against Brighton.  It seems certain to break the 30000 mark, and all that is needed then is a good performance by the team, a positive result ushering in a solid start to the season, and the Leeds United ball will be well and truly rolling again.

That’s not too much to ask, now is it?  Brian and the lads in White – it’s over to you.

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Bates Leaves Leeds on a Typically Sour Note

Posted on 28/07/2013 | Leave a comment
Not-So-Cuddly Ken

Not-So-Cuddly Ken

It came out of the blue in a terse statement from Leeds United: Ken Bates would no longer be club president, and all his connections with the club had been severed forthwith. No reasons were initially given – and quite frankly, nobody at first cared. The main thing was, Bates was gone. He was going to be President of the club for life, then it was going to be only three years (there may not actually have been much of a difference between those first two) – but now he was gone, history, end of. Bye bye, Ken. Don’t let the door whack you in the arse on the way out.

Now, though, more details have emerged as to the reason for Bates’ abrupt departure. It appears that Ken – never a man to underestimate his own importance – had committed the club to a £500k contract for private jet flight to and from the Monaco bolt-hole of il Presidente for matchday travel. No RyanAir or EasyJet for Uncle Ken, you see, he was going to do it in style and, as ever, the club – the fans – would be the ones forking out for it. This, then, is the straw that has broken the Dubai-based camel’s back. Ken received a missive, delivered by hand, informing him that his non-services would no longer be required.

Staggeringly, Ken seems to resent this. After all the legal shenanigans that have punctuated his reign of terror in LS11, costing the club a reported £4m, he now feels that he is a wronged party, that Leeds United have treated him “despicably” and that he should be compensated. So, he intends to sally forth to pursue his favourite pastime of litigation – with Leeds United this time in the respondent’s box, as opposed to blindly funding his deluded fantasies. The irony of this is breathtaking, and it is only to be hoped that the British legal system has finally had enough of this irascible old man’s nonsense and will proceed to laugh him out of court. Football’s had its fill of Ken – honestly, hasn’t the whole country?

This, let us not forget, is the man who proposed (quite seriously) that fences enclosing fans on the terraces should be electrified to dissuade those of an eager disposition from getting at rival fans or the field of play itself. Who knows what that might have led to if the whole concept of fencing hadn’t become deeply unfashionable in the wake of Hillsborough? This is the man who declared his ambition to be the ejection of Leeds United and its “animal” followers from the Football League, following the actions of a group of freelance demolition contractors from Yorkshire in disabling the Stamford Bridge electronic scoreboard in 1984. Big Brother was watching us, and he decreed we weren’t fit to be part of the football family. He wanted us out – and he so nearly achieved his objective, didn’t he? This is the man, after all, who presided over the lowest point in Leeds United’s history. Ken Bates is a name that will forever be associated in the minds of Leeds fans with failure, corruption and despair.

Ken Bates and his megaphone mouth, unconnected to anything remotely resembling a brain, has represented everything bad about football for decades now – and it’s time we all had a well-earned rest from him. It is perhaps fitting that Bates and Ferguson – two markedly less-than-pleasant football personalities – should be heading into the sunset at the same time. Having the name of Ken Bates connected to the club I love has been a deeply horrible experience for me and thousands of my fellow Leeds United fans. The final separation looks highly unlikely to be amicable – Uncle Ken is far too self-involved and vindictive for that – but it is nonetheless a most welcome development for anyone with the best interests of Leeds United at heart. Ironically, GFH Capital are now quoting a confidentiality clause in refusing to comment on the reasons for the End of Ken, something the Bearded Gob used extensively during the endless takeover saga last year. So for the time being, Bates is wasting his bile on the desert air and getting no official response. But many thousands of happy individuals in Leeds United colours would be happy to deliver one last message to him.

Sod off, Ken, and take your legal team with you.

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Leeds Fans: Are We Better Off “In The Know”? Or In The Dark??

Posted on 02/07/2013 | Leave a comment

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We’ve all heard statements from our beloved Leeds United along the lines of “The Club will not comment on transfer deals until they are done.”  And yet, year after year, rumours abound, information (sometimes accurate) leaks out, and speculation rages.  It goes with the territory – Leeds United are massively well-supported and all those people want to know what’s going on.  And a lot of those people want to feel that they’re in a position to SAY what’s going on.  It’s called being ITK – In The Know.

As far as I can tell from my widespread reading of many internet boards and groups dedicated to Leeds United AFC – there ARE certain individuals who seem to have an inside track to knowledge not available to the mainstream.  These are the guys and gals with “good contacts down at Thorp Arch”, or maybe people with the ear and mobile number of Thom Kirwin, the Voice of Yorkshire Radio.  There’s usually at least one person on any given internet board who, when they speak, the rest of us listen.  But it’s also true to say that for every legitimate “source” with privileged knowledge, there’s probably at least ten people who just want to sound as if they know what they’re on about, but whose actual awareness of what’s going on amounts to zip.

The mood swing among the masses this last day or so sums up this dilemma.  Before the weekend, with the news that Steve Morison (in effect our transfer fee for Becchio) was being loaned out to Millwall, the hue and cry on the Leeds United virtual streets was that this meant we truly hadn’t a potty to pee in, that GFH-C were conning shysters and that the End of The World was pretty much nigh.  Then: sensation!  Bates completed his transition to the seat of no power upstairs, there was a new chairman, Harvey was relegated from CEO to be replaced by Smiler Haigh, Salem Patel emerged from the wilderness with a knowing wink for the LUFC twitterati, and – wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles – we had a million pound signing that other clubs actually wanted and who is a promising player under 30.  How much can things change in such a short space of time?

It makes me wonder whether it’s actually worth the bother of staying up to date and getting to know what’s happening behind the scenes.  Is being ITK worth it?  The club seems determined to go about its business on a hush-hush basis – give or take the Noel Hunt deal, which we all seem to have known about since Jimmy Armfield was manager – and maybe this silent but deadly approach is best?  Matt Smith came right out of left field, and the Luke Murphy deal was done and dusted before the speculation wheels had really begun to grind.  If these results are gained by the club keeping its cards close to its chest – then isn’t that really for the best?  For Leeds United itself, AND for the fans??

I think I might just relax, sit back and let it happen from here on in this summer.  It strikes me that, as a body of fans, we don’t really have the first clue as to what’s going off at Thorp Arch, or what the true state of the finances are – especially given David Haigh’s tweet about “working on some exciting news”.  Maybe we should just let them get on with it – it’s not as if we have any real influence anyway.  And I don’t mean we should stop caring – it’s just that I was in a pessimistic tizz as well when Morison departed.  Not because I thought he was vital to our future, but for what it seemed to say about the state of the club.  That seems to have been a false signal, so perhaps we should simply let it all wash over us, and see what happens.  The proof of the pudding, after all, will not be tasted until the 3rd of August when crisis club Brighton limp into LS11.

Let’s see how we’re looking then.  In Brian We Trust.

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