Times Online - Sport
Red Adair of Elland Road prepares for next mission
BY MATT DICKINSON
THERE WERE TIMES during the past five months when Trevor Birch could not see any hope of salvation for Leeds United. Liquidation was a real possibility while a club with about £100 million in debts was being messed around by Bahraini sheikhs and Ugandan property developers. “There was a genuine prospect that, if the club had gone into administration, liquidation would have followed,” Birch said yesterday, 48 hours after resigning as chief executive and handing control to a new consortium. “That would have meant the club folding completely. There were a number of times when I couldn’t see a solution because of the enormity of the problems.”
It remains to be seen whether the men behind Adulant Force Ltd, the company that now owns Leeds, have the abilities and resources to be heralded as saviours, but no one else who came forward had the means to avert financial ruin. “Others, like the sheikh, might have had the club’s interests at heart but this consortium was the only one that stepped up with the money,” Birch said.
On the back of his work at Chelsea, where he was brought in to avoid a similar disaster and negotiated the takeover by Roman Abramovich, Birch is developing a reputation as football’s Red Adair. After months of complex and delicate negotiations, the former insolvency specialist succeeded in persuading the main creditors to write off about £60 million in debt, which allowed the consortium to pay £22 million for the football club.
Saving the club from administration was vital, but Birch’s most important achievement may yet turn out to be keeping the first team intact after previous fire sales. Although Leeds are bottom of the Barclaycard Premiership and five points behind Leicester City, they face Manchester City tonight with a chance of avoiding the drop, which would certainly not have been the case if Alan Smith, Paul Robinson and Mark Viduka had been sold.
“My aim all along was to keep the squad intact because we had all seen that selling players had only made the problems worse,” Birch said. “Premiership survival was always paramount and I would like to think that the team is going into the last couple of months with a fighting chance.
“I had a great relationship with Eddie Gray (the caretaker manager). He hugely impressed me with the way he conducted himself throughout a difficult time. With players like Mark Viduka, I believe the team can climb out of the bottom three. Mark has really set about galvanising the players in recent weeks. He is the one walking around the training pitch saying, ‘Come on, we aren’t going down’. ”
Relegation would cost the new consortium about £20 million and could stretch their resources to the limit, but there was no other escape route for Leeds. The deal is sure to have outraged some Premiership rivals because, as with Leicester City, where the club went into administration and wiped off vast debts, they have not had to pay the full price for the terrible mis-management by Peter Ridsdale, the former chairman.
“The success is tempered by the fact that shareholders do not receive anything, but there is the huge positive that administration, and all the uncertainty it brings, has been avoided,” Birch said. He will stay on at Elland Road until the end of the season when he may look for a new job in football. He was previously offered the chief executive’s post at Aston Villa.
Red Adair of Elland Road prepares for next mission
BY MATT DICKINSON
THERE WERE TIMES during the past five months when Trevor Birch could not see any hope of salvation for Leeds United. Liquidation was a real possibility while a club with about £100 million in debts was being messed around by Bahraini sheikhs and Ugandan property developers. “There was a genuine prospect that, if the club had gone into administration, liquidation would have followed,” Birch said yesterday, 48 hours after resigning as chief executive and handing control to a new consortium. “That would have meant the club folding completely. There were a number of times when I couldn’t see a solution because of the enormity of the problems.”
It remains to be seen whether the men behind Adulant Force Ltd, the company that now owns Leeds, have the abilities and resources to be heralded as saviours, but no one else who came forward had the means to avert financial ruin. “Others, like the sheikh, might have had the club’s interests at heart but this consortium was the only one that stepped up with the money,” Birch said.
On the back of his work at Chelsea, where he was brought in to avoid a similar disaster and negotiated the takeover by Roman Abramovich, Birch is developing a reputation as football’s Red Adair. After months of complex and delicate negotiations, the former insolvency specialist succeeded in persuading the main creditors to write off about £60 million in debt, which allowed the consortium to pay £22 million for the football club.
Saving the club from administration was vital, but Birch’s most important achievement may yet turn out to be keeping the first team intact after previous fire sales. Although Leeds are bottom of the Barclaycard Premiership and five points behind Leicester City, they face Manchester City tonight with a chance of avoiding the drop, which would certainly not have been the case if Alan Smith, Paul Robinson and Mark Viduka had been sold.
“My aim all along was to keep the squad intact because we had all seen that selling players had only made the problems worse,” Birch said. “Premiership survival was always paramount and I would like to think that the team is going into the last couple of months with a fighting chance.
“I had a great relationship with Eddie Gray (the caretaker manager). He hugely impressed me with the way he conducted himself throughout a difficult time. With players like Mark Viduka, I believe the team can climb out of the bottom three. Mark has really set about galvanising the players in recent weeks. He is the one walking around the training pitch saying, ‘Come on, we aren’t going down’. ”
Relegation would cost the new consortium about £20 million and could stretch their resources to the limit, but there was no other escape route for Leeds. The deal is sure to have outraged some Premiership rivals because, as with Leicester City, where the club went into administration and wiped off vast debts, they have not had to pay the full price for the terrible mis-management by Peter Ridsdale, the former chairman.
“The success is tempered by the fact that shareholders do not receive anything, but there is the huge positive that administration, and all the uncertainty it brings, has been avoided,” Birch said. He will stay on at Elland Road until the end of the season when he may look for a new job in football. He was previously offered the chief executive’s post at Aston Villa.